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HELPING  FRANCE 


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E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 


REFUGEE  FROM  HAZEBROUCK 
AGED  92 


HELPING  FRANCE 

The    Red    Cross    in 
the  Devastated  Area 


BY 

RUTH    GAINES 

AUTHOR  OF  "A  VILLAGE  IN  PICAHDT,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 

^'-''-flSl  FIFTH  AVENUE 


COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY 
E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


All  Right*  Reterved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


PREFACE 


A  FRENCH  newspaper  correspondent 
was  conducted  one  day  through  the 
Paris  offices  of  the  American  Red  Cross.  He 
was  vastly  and  courteously  impressed  both  by 
what  he  saw  and  by  his  guide.  "But,"  he 
writes,  "I  cannot  name  to  you  the  person  who 
showed  me  about  because  he  was  an  officer, 
and  I  suppose  that  in  America  as  in  France 
the  uniform  fosters  and  expresses  the  wish  for 
a  loss  of  identity."  It  was  charmingly  put, 
delicately  imagined.  Best  of  all,  it  is  true. 

Our  American  Red  Cross  in  France,  ac- 
cused by  some  of  aggressiveness,  practicality 
and  all  the  pushing  faults  of  our  young  democ- 
racy, has  nevertheless  the  innate  shyness  of  its 
youth  and  of  its  singleness  of  purpose.  All 
its  hope  is  that  it  may  have  helped  to  alleviate 
suffering  and  advance  the  hour  of  victory. 


1562959 


vi  Preface 

For  this  reason,  no  names  of  Red  Cross 
workers  will  be  found  in  the  pages  of  this 
book.  They  have  acted  merely  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  our  Red  Cross  in  France  and  are 
by  their  own  request  anonymous. 

The  author  regrets  only  that  thanks  can  not 
be  given  where  due  to  the  many  colleagues— 
and  many  of  them  in  inconspicuous  positions— 
whose  help  has  made  this  record  possible. 

THE  AUTHOR. 

PARIS, 
February,  1919. 


NOTE  ON  THE  ILLUSTRATIONS 


IT  has  been  the  aim  of  the  soldier-artists 
of  France  to  publish  to  all  the  world  the 
desecration  of  her  ancient  monuments  and 
cherished  soil.  To  this  fact  we  owe  the  re- 
markable series  of  woodcuts,  etchings  and 
paintings  of  her  ruins,  from  which  we  have 
drawn  freely  for  this  record.  Here,  as  in 
every  manifestation  of  life,  the  French 
have  found  beauty  also.  As  M.  Georges 
d'Esparbes  writes  in  the  preface  to  that  rare 
album,  "Noyon,  Guiscard,  Ham,"  by  M. 
Armand  Gueritte,  "When  I  had  under  my 
eyes  the  aquafortes  which  M.  Gueritte  has 
portrayed  of  his  countryside  in  the  in- 
vaded territory,  a  great  pity  pierced  me  before 
that  aspect  of  the  motherland,  of  which  these 
drawings  showed  me  the  wounds.  I  did  not 
see  beyond  that:  my  country  destroyed.  .  .  . 

vii 


viii       Note  on  the  Illustrations 

If  this  work  is  so  lovely,  it  is  because  we 
divine  that  its  purpose  is,  above  all,  to  be  of 
use,  and  that  purpose  renders  it  again  lovelier ; 
because  its  reason  for  being  is  perhaps  the 
highest  reason  of  art." 

The  same  purpose,  from  a  constructive 
point  of  view,  has  animated  French  architects. 
Plans  for  French  reconstruction  have  kept 
pace  with  German  destruction.  Hence  we 
have  series  such  as  that  of  M.  Georges  Wybo, 
from  which,  by  permission,  we  have  drawn 
our  chapter  headings:  "Reflexions  et  Croquis 
sur  T Architecture  au  Pays  de  France."  "In 
order  to  protect  a  patrimony  which  is  dear  to 
us,"  M.  Wybo  has  drawn  these  examples  of 
typical  regional  architecture.  They  will  serve 
as  an  inspiration  in  rebuilding  the  ruins. 

When  our  soldiers  pass  through  the  rural 
districts  of  France,  they  may  see  in  the  village 
halls,  if  they  will,  posters  of  welcome  bearing 
the  legends:  "Peasants  of  France,  salute  the 
soldiers  of  free  America  who  come  by  the  mil- 
lions to  mingle  their  blood  with  that  of  our 


Note  on  the  Illustrations          ix 

sons,  to  preserve  us  in  the  right  to  cultivate 
our  fields,  and  to  prevent  the  barbarians  from 
depriving  us  of  our  hard- won  liberties,"  or 
"The  Heart  of  America.  In  the  interior,  as 
with  the  armies,  no  suffering  is  a  matter  of  in- 
difference to  the  American  Red  Cross." 

Conversely,  American  artists,  such  as  Miss 
A.  M.  Upjohn,  have  made  their  contribution 
to  France.  The  fidelity,  the  sympathy  of  her 
portraits  are  those  not  alone  of  the  artist,  but 
of  the  relief  worker  who  has  lived  among  and 
loved  the  peasants  of  devastated  France. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAUB 

I.  "HOME  SERVICE" 1 

II.  To  WIN  THE  WAR 21 

III.  THE  FIELD  OF  OPPORTUNITY        ...  29 

IV.  THE  PLAN:    ORGANIZATION  ....  39 
V.  THE  PLAN:    ADMINISTRATION       ...  52 

VI.  THE  PLAN:    COOPERATION    ....     60 
VII.  COOPERATION  IN  PRACTICE   ....     72 

VIII.  DIRECT  INTERVENTION 91 

IX.  "POLISHING  THE  TARNISHED  MIRRORS"    .  108 
X.  BEHIND  THE  BRITISH  LINES         .       .       .  121 

XI.  THE  PERSONAL  TOUCH 132 

XII.  OUR  PRESENCE  WITH  THEM        .       .       .  145 

XIII.  THE  ROAD  TO  VERDUN         .       .       .       .156 

XIV.  THE  PREFECT  OF  THE  FRONTIER        .       .  175 
XV.  THE  FLAGS  OF  VICTORY        .       .       .       .191 

APPENDIX  .  213 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FA  OB 

Refugee  from  Hazebrouck,  aged  92  Frontispiece 

A.  M.  UPJOHN 

In  Front  of  the  Church  at  Saint-Cernin  * 

GEORGES  WYBO      1 

A  Poor  Village  of  France      .       .     JEAN  PERKIER  9 

Old  Fortifications  at  Antibes  *    .  GEORGES  WYBO  21 

A  War  Orphan  of  Brittany  .       .    A.  M.  UPJOHN  23 

Noyon,  in  April  1917*          »          GEORGES  WYBO  29 

A  House  in  Noyon        .       .    ARMAND  GUERITTE  37 
Notre  Dame,  From  St.  Julien-le-Pauvre  * 

GEORGES  WYBO  39 

Bridge  at  Tours  *  .       .       .          GEORGES  WYBO  52 

The  Son  of  a  Soldier,  Paris  .       .    A.  M.  UPJOHN  55 

Public  Fountain  at  Noyon  *  .       .  GEORGES  WYBO  60 

Ruins  of  Contalmaison,  Somme     PAUL  MANSARD  69 

Municipal  Offices  at  Urrugne  *       GEORGES  WYBO  72 

The  Chateau,  Ham  .  )  A 

.         .  f  ARMAND  GUERITTE    87 

A  Street  m  Guiscard     .        .  J 

Onvillers  Church,  Santerre  *          GEORGES  WYBO     91 
Laon  Cathedral  *  .       .       .          GEORGES  WYBO  108 

*  Reflexions  et  Croquis  sur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:  Georges  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

xiii 


xiv  Illustrations 

PAOB 

The  Mill  on  the  Somme,  Ham]  . 

.  f  ARMAND  GUERITTE  111 

A  Street  in  Ham     .       .       .  J 

House  on  the  Luce  Plateau  (near  Amiens)  * 

GEORGES  WYBO  121 

Lowland  Farm  (near  Soissons)  *  GEORGES  WYBO  132 
Street  in  Fontenoy  *  .  .  GEORGES  WYBO  145 

Bora  in  Flight  from  Lens,  1914  .  A.  M.  UPJOHN  147 
Village  Hall  at  Fismes  *  .  .  GEORGES  WYBO  156 
Market  at  Montrejeau  *  (Comminges) 

GEORGES  WYBO  175 
Church  of  Flirey,  Meurthe-Moselle 

LUCY  GARNOT  179 

Saint-Cyr  (near  Dourdan)  *  .  GEORGES  WYBO  191 
Telegraph  Corps  Putting  up  Wires,  Noyon 

ARMAND  GUERITTE    195 

Map         .       .       . 214 


*  Rlflexions  el  Croquis  tur  I' Architecture  ou  Payi  de  Franct:  George*  Wybo. 
Hachttte  et  Cie.,  Parit. 


HELPING  FRANCE 


In  Front  of  the  Church  at  Saini-Cernin. 


Reflexions  et  Croquis  sur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:   Georges  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

HELPING    FRANCE 

CHAPTER  I 

"HOME  SERVICE" 

IF  there  is  one  division  above  all  others  of 
the  American  Red  Cross  activities  for  the 
soldier  which  the  American  Expeditionary 
Force  in  France  holds  dear,  it  is,  I  venture 
to  state,  that  of  the  Bureau  of  Home  Service. 
Many  a  soldier  is  anxious  over  wife  or  sweet- 
heart, or  aged  parents,  left,  too  often,  without 


2  Helping  France 

adequate  means  of  support,  or  unheard  from, 
it  may  be  for  months.  The  Home  Service 
bridges  the  thousands  of  miles  of  silence,  and 
relieves  suspense  with  aid,  or  best  of  all,  with 
information.  Infinite  pains  are  taken  in  this 
service;  millions  of  dollars  spent.  To  what 
end?  Primarily  that  the  American  soldier, 
freed  of  anxiety,  may  be  a  more  efficient 
pawn  in  the  great  game  of  war. 

It  is  also,  I  venture  to  state,  in  its  role  of 
home  service,  that  is,  of  service  to  the  sol- 
dier's family,  that  the  American  Red  Cross 
has  made  its  most  valuable  contribution  to 
the  French  Army  as  well,  and  to  the  French 
nation  during  the  war.  For  it  is  in  terms  of 
home  service  that  the  activities  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Civilian  Relief  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  in  France  can  best  be  interpreted  to 
America.  It  is  according  to  the  moral  even 
more  than  to  the  material  evaluation  of  this 
service  that  the  millions  of  Red  Cross  mem- 
bers, who  have  by  their  sacrifices  and  their 
contributions  made  it  possible,  should  take 


"Home  Service"  3 

stock    of    their    contribution    to  the   Great 
War. 

Picture  to  yourself  the  mental  state  of  a 
French  soldier  mobilized  hastily  in  1914  in 
the  northern  regions  of  France,  so  soon  over- 
run and  so  tenaciously  held  by  the  enemy. 
Multiply  him  by  thousands.  Send  him 
through  the  campaigns  of  the  Marne,  of  the 
bitterly  contested  Chemin  des  Dames,  of  the 
defense  of  Verdun,  if  you  will,  and  bring  him 
thus  to  the  little  hamlet  whence  he  started. 
What  will  he  find?  What  did  he  find?  I 
quote  from  an  eye  witness,*  whose  company 
was  just  going  into  repose  after  twenty-two 
days  in  the  front  line  trenches,  twenty-two 
days  in  the  "hell  of  Verdun."  They  saw, 
along  the  road,  "a  modest  house,  which  had 
been  disemboweled  by  an  exploding  shell. 
Its  steps  were  half  demolished,  its  blinds  hung 
crazily;  the  gaping  windows  showed  the  emp- 
tiness of  the  interior.  'My  house,'  cried  a 
man  suddenly,  and  darted  in.  It  was  not 

*  Raymond  Joubert:  Verdun. 


4  Helping  France 

difficult  to  do,  since  the  wicket  of  the  little 
garden,  held  in  place  by  only  one  hinge, 
flapped  to  and  fro  in  the  wind. 

"The  man,  when  we  saw  him  again,"  con- 
tinued the  narrator,  "was  all  agog,  his  arms 
waving,  his  body  convulsed  with  hilarious 
surprise.  Everything  was  reduced  to  dust  in 
his  house,  and  methodically  and  minutely 
destroyed.  He  had  good  cause  to  laugh! 
He  would  never  have  believed  his  misfortune 
so  complete." 

And  what  of  his  family,  his  wife,  his  chil- 
dren, his  parents?  In  every  case,  one  of  two 
things  had  happened.  They  had  either  re- 
mained to  be  taken  prisoners  by  the  Germans, 
or  they  had  fled  before  them,  fugitives.  All 
degrees  of  misery  are  comprised  in  these  two 
classifications.  They  make  the  subject  mat- 
ter of  two  main  divisions  of  our  Red  Cross 
civilian  relief;  that  of  rehabilitation,  acting 
in  the  devastated  area,  and  that  of  refugees, 
following  the  families  in  their  dispersion  into 
every  department  of  France.  Yet  there  can 


"Home  Service"  5 

be  no  hard  and  fast  distinction;  for  civilian 
prisoners,  sent  into  slavery  in  Germany  and 
later  shipped  back  by  the  thousands  daily, 
became  refugees;  and  there  were  thousands 
more,  refugees  from  destroyed  villages,  gath- 
ered into  the  larger  as  yet  undestroyed  centers 
in  the  devastated  territory  itself.  In  short, 
the  story  of  rehabilitation  in  the  devastated 
area,  which  is  all  the  present  volume  pre- 
tends to,  is  the  story  in  epitome,  of  all  Red 
Cross  home  service  in  France. 

Civilian  prisoners!  America  has  heard  of 
them,  and  shuddered  at  the  revival  by  Ger- 
many of  the  methods  of  pre-Christian  war- 
fare, in  this  twentieth  century.  "You  have 
sat  at  the  funeral  of  dear  sons,"  cried  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Belgian  Relief  Commission  work- 
ing on  the  German  side  of  the  lines,  "  But  you 
have  never  sat  at  the  funeral  of  a  city."* 
And  he  goes  on  to  describe  in  poignant  terms 
the  first  levy  of  the  citizens  of  Mons.  All  the 
night,  after  the  deportation,  he  walked  the 

*  John  H.  Gade:  National  Geographic  Magazine. 


6  Helping  France 

streets  of  that  stricken  city,  unable  to  sleep, 
equally  unable  to  escape  from  the  shrieks  of 
the  bereaved.  Mons,  Valenciennes,  Lille  and 
a  score  of  others— their  sorrows  were  the  same. 
Counting  the  last  and  most  infamous  de- 
portation of  fourteen  thousand  young  lads 
and  gray  beards  just  before  the  armistice, 
there  were  forty  thousand  old  men  and 
women,  young  men  and  maidens  carried  into 
slavery  from  Lille  alone.  "I  saw,"  says  an 
eye  witness  of  this  last  atrocity,  "I  saw,  in 
August,  1914,  our  valorous  regiments  set 
forth  for  the  war.  I  saw,  in  October,  1918,  the 
interminable  columns  of  civilians  set  forth 
into  exile,  and  I  remarked  in  the  latter,  at 
the  end  of  four  years  of  weakening  occupa- 
tion, as  in  the  former,  on  the  threshold  of 
glory,  the  same  bearing,  the  same  faith,  the 
same  valiance,  the  same  anxiety  to  do  honor 
to  France,  and  to  proclaim  on  high  its  heroism 
and  its  mighty  vitality."*  The  words  of  the 
Old  Testament  recur  like  a  dirge:  "How 

*  Pierre  Bosc:  Les  Allemands  &  Lille. 


"Home  Service"  7 

doth  the  city  sit  solitary  that  was  full  of 
people,  how  is  she  become  a  widow  that  was 
great  among  the  nations,  and  princess  among 
the  provinces,  how  is  she  become  tribu- 
tary!" 

Lille  was  a  great  manufacturing  city,  form- 
ing with  Roubaix  and  Turcoing,  her  neighbors 
and  companions  in  misfortune,  the  pre-war 
triumvirate  of  textile  industries  in  France. 
Arras,  Cambrai,  Lille,  famous  in  our  ears 
to-day  as  landmarks  in  the  flux  of  battles, 
were  formerly  famous  for  the  productions  to 
which  they  gave  their  names,  arras,  cambric, 
and  lisle.  "Even  the  Sultan  knew  well  the 
tapestries  of  Arras,"*  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury. 

Yet  it  is  not  in  the  destroyed  cities,  not  even 
in  Soissons  or  Reims,  rich  in  historic  associa- 
tions— though  these  are  referred  to  as  "mur- 
dered"— that  the  heart  of  France  is  cen- 
tered. The  cities  of  the  Northern  provinces 
grew  up  out  of  the  small  industries  of  the  vil- 

*  Albert  Demangeon:  La  Ficardie. 


8  Helping  France 

lages.  Lille,  Arras,  Amiens,  all  took  the 
produce  of  the  country,  the  flax,  the  wool  of 
the  flocks,  even  the  lucid  waters  of  the  Somme, 
as  the  raw  material  of  their  wealth.  To  a 
larger  extent  than  most  manufacturing  cen- 
ters, they  depend  still  for  their  hands — or  did 
before  the  war — on  the  winter  leisure  of 
the  farmers.  North,  south,  east,  west, 
wherever  you  go  in  France,  it  is  the  land 
that  is  the  source  of  individual,  of  national 
wealth. 

The  land  and  the  people,  they  are  inex- 
tricably bound  together.  Books  are  written 
explaining  the  character  of  the  peasant  (pay- 
san)  by  the  character  of  the  locality  (pays) 
which  has  bred  him,  and  his  fathers  and 
grandfathers  before  him.  The  texture  of  the 
soil,  the  nature  of  the  crop,  have  determined 
the  routine  of  his  life,  the  style  of  his  building, 
the  temper  of  his  soul.  Two-thirds  to  nine- 
tenths  of  the  farmlands  in  the  invaded  de- 
partments are  owned  by  the  farmers  them- 
selves. Of  these,  the  small  farmers  or  peas- 


A  Poor  Village  of  France. 

L'n  Pauvre  Village  de  France:   Rent  Benjamin.     Woodcuts  by  Jean  Perrier, 
G.  Weil  &  Co.,  Paris. 


"Home  Service"  9 

ants  make  up  the  bulk,  "each  family  having 
its  house,  its  land,  and  passing  on  to  the  chil- 
dren its  home,  its  traditions,  its  agricultural 
implements."*  The  family,  the  home  (foyer), 
the  locality  (pays),  the  land;  these  are  the 
cumulative  passions  which  blend  and  fire 
the  patriotism  of  France.  You  will  hear  not 
so  often  "beautiful  France,"  as  the  "beau- 
tiful land  of  France."  You  will  hear  one 
Frenchman  ask  another  "Of  what  pays  are 
you?"  In  the  Marseillaise  itself — though  not 
alas!  in  the  English  translation — the  soldier 
fights  to  rid  the  furrows  of  the  hated  in- 
vader. The  invaded  region,  despoiled,  pro- 
faned, is  "notre  grande  blesse*e,  la  terre  de 
France."  The  very  apple  trees,  girdled  and 
dying,  have  a  personality;  the  villages  are 
"assassinated;"  the  windowless  houses  are 
"blind." 

This  love  of  the  land,  one  finds  it  in  France 
the  basis  not  only  of  defense  but  of  reconstruc- 
tion. Mme.  Moreau,  President  of  the  Vil- 

*  Albert  Demangeon:   La  Picardie. 


io  Helping  France 

lages  Libels,  notable  among  the  associations 
for  reconstruction  formed  by  French  women, 
says  in  addressing  her  colleagues:  "In  this 
task  we,  women  of  the  frontier,  have  the  part 
Providence  has  given  us.  This  work  is  woven 
with  our  lives  and  mingles  itself  with  our  mem- 
ories, our  affections,  with  the  heavy  respon- 
sibilities of  our  situation.  It  is  not  ours  to 
assume  it  or  not  to  assume  it.  It  imposes 
itself.  Who  then  will  raise  again  the  family 
home,  restore  our  fields,  our  vines,  replant 
for  our  little  children  the  woods  which  our 
grandfathers  have  planted,  if  it  is  not  we? 
The  names  of  villages  and  the  corners  of  farms, 
which  in  the  Communiques  are  only  names, 
we  have  known  since  our  infancy  every  stone 
and  every  spring  of  them — and  all  that  we 
love  there  is  gone.  Whether  we  belong  to 
the  Marches  of  Lorraine  with  my  compatriot, 
the  blessed  Joan  of  Arc,  to  the  Nord,  to  the 
country  of  Soissons,  to  the  Marne,  or  to  the 
Ardennes,  we  have  the  honor  to  be  of  the 
chosen  land,  the  land  of  the  front,  and  I  say 


"Home  Service"  ir 

it  proudly,  we,  we,  too,  belong  to  the  Twen- 
tieth Corps."* 

Again,  listen  to  the  plea  of  the  Justice  of 
the  Peace  of  Combles,  sent  in  1917  to  the 
American  Red  Cross.  "Ladies  and  Gentle- 
men of  Free  America"  he  begins,  "I  have  the 
honor  to  call  to  your  attention  one  of  the  most 
unfortunate  regions  of  France,  devastated 
and  destroyed  by  more  than  two  years  of  war 
— the  village  of  Combles,  chief  town  of  a 
Canton  composed  of  twenty-one  communes  in 
the  department  of  the  Somme.  ...  If  a 
journey  is  made  at  the  present  tune  through 
these  regions,  so  alive  and  so  fertile  before  the 
war,  but  now  so  desolate,  nothing  is  to  be 
seen  but  a  vast  chalky  plain,  quite  white  and 
everywhere  reduced  to  powder.  The  ground 
which  had  a  fertile  soil  of  one  meter  in  depth, 
has  been  completely  turned  up  and  the  shells 
and  the  machine  guns  have  brought  to  the 
surface  the  subsoil  of  pebbly  chalk.  This 
soil,  which  is  now  mixed  with  all  sorts  of  rub- 

*  Report. 


12  Helping  France 

bish  and  scraps  of  shells,  will  take  more  than 
fifty  years  to  recover  its  fertility. 

"Shall  I  relate  to  you,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men, the  sufferings,  the  endurance,  the  cour- 
age and  heroism  displayed  by  the  unfortu- 
nate inhabitants  of  Combles  and  of  the  com- 
munes of  Hardecourt-aux-Bois,  Guillemont, 
Ginchy,  Maurepas,  and  later  of  Morval, 
Rancourt,  Sailly-Sallisel  (the  first-mentioned 
places  situated  on  the  Front  opposite  the 
Anglo-French  positions  established  at  Mari- 
court),  the  courage  displayed  in  the  face  of 
such  misfortunes  and  destruction  and  in  the 
midst  of  vexations  and  violence  of  all  sorts 
to  which  they  were  subjected? 

"Maricourt!  a  village  ever  to  be  remember- 
ed, which  a  very  ancient  tradition  speaks  of  as 
consecrated  to  the  Virgin,  curtis  Marias  (Vil- 
lage of  Marie).  This  village  has,  in  fact, 
never  been  trodden  under  foot  by  the  invad- 
ing hordes,  neither  in  1870  nor  in  the  present 


war: 


When  the  Bavarians  and  other  Germans 


"Home  Service"  13 

boasted  that  by  means  of  renewed  attacks  they 
would  succeed  in  taking  the  village,  the  women 
of  Combles  replied  proudly :  c  You  will  not  take 
Maricourt,  not  even  a  brick  of  it!'  and  the 
village  and  its  trenches  stood  out  against  all 
the  attacks  of  the  Germans  in  1914,  1915, 
1916!  Its  defenders  were  intrepid  and  the 
place  remained  impregnable. 

"William  II  and  the  Crown  Prince  them- 
selves came  to  Combles,  accompanied  by 
Staff  Officers  of  their  allies,  and  pointed  out  to 
the  latter  the  difficulty  of  taking  the  position. 

"Numerous  Bavarian  regiments  were  used 
up  in  their  fruitless  attempts,  renewed  from 
month  to  month  for  more  than  two  years,  to 
take  this  village.  The  discouraged  men  re- 
maining from  these  regiments  were  sent  to 
other  fronts.  They  were  replaced  by  Prus- 
sian regiments  who,  more  obstinate  or  better 
trained,  wished  to  excel  the  Bavarians,  but 
they  in  their  turn  were  destroyed.  Thou- 
sands of  them  lay  in  front  of  the  Anglo-French 
trenches  at  Maricourt. 


14  Helping  France 

"During  these  alternate  attacks  and  regular 
battles  in  which  the  villages  of  Guillemont, 
Ginchy,  Maurepas,  Hardecourt  were  under 
fire  from  the  heavy  guns,  the  population  of 
Combles,  continuously  on  the  qui  vive,  was 
a  prey  to  every  kind  of  anguish. 

"Many  a  time  we  hoped  to  see  our  victo- 
rious soldiers  reach  our  town.  We  heard  the 
French  drums  sounding  the  charge,  we  heard 
the  reply  of  their  artillery  and  their  heavy 
fire,  then  the  heavy  guns  hidden  in  the  woods 
above  Combles  hurled  their  shells  at  our  regi- 
ments which,  in  their  eagerness,  had  drawn 
too  close.  Too  frequently,  in  the  middle  of 
the  night,  when  the  troops  had  broken  through 
the  enemy  and  were  rapidly  advancing  on 
Combles,  violent  storms  occurred  followed  by 
torrential  rain  which  soaked  the  hills  and  the 
valleys,  and  stopped  dead  the  advance  of  our 
men  who  could  thus  no  longer  be  seconded  by 
their  artillery.  Then  silence  and  darkness 
would  reign  again.  For  us,  the  hope  of  deliv- 
erance was  once  more  lost,  and  we  were  happy 


"Home  Service"  15 

if  on  the  following  morning  we  did  not  see 
the  arrival  of  twenty  or  thirty  French  or  Eng- 
lish soldiers,  harassed  and  with  torn  uniforms 
covered  with  blood  and  mud  and  escorted  by 
Boche  soldiers  who  led  them  away,  prisoners, 
down  the  High  street  of  Combles. 

"These  unfortunate  prisoners  were  abso- 
lutely forbidden  to  speak  to  us,  but  we  said  a 
sympathetic  word  to  them  in  a  low  voice. 
The  greater  part  of  them  did  not  look  dejected 
or  discouraged,  but  rather  indignant  at  hav- 
ing to  submit  to  such  captivity,  and  a  gleam  of 
courage  and  hope  was  still  to  be  seen  in  their 
eyes,  like  heroes  whom  Fortune  had  be- 
trayed ! 

"Over  the  six  kilometres  which  separated 
Maricourt  and  Hardecourt  from  Combles 
the  same  tragedies  were  frequently  renewed 
during  the  darkest  nights,  when  the  Germans 
opened  furious  attacks  to  surprise  first  the 
advance  posts  and  then  the  trenches  of  Mari- 
court. What  struggles,  what  hecatombs  by 
thousands!  According  to  German  officers, 


i6  Helping  France 

there  were  heaps  of  corpses  of  soldiers  and 
horses  to  the  height  of  a  man  between  the 
fronts  of  the  two  armies.  More  than  thirty 
thousand  of  their  soldiers  were  thrown  pele- 
mele  and  buried  in  the  quarries  between 
Hardecourt-aux-Bois  and  Maricourt.  Their 
wounded  were  continually  passing  through  to 
the  hospitals  established  at  Combles.  The 
tombs  of  soldiers  and  officers  increased  the 
size  of  the  cemetery  threefold.  The  bodies 
of  superior  officers  were  transported  from 
Combles  to  Peronne,  to  be  sent  to  their  fam- 
ilies in  Germany. 

"Our  heroes,  who  have  died  for  their  coun- 
try, and  for  the  emancipation  and  liberty  of 
nations,  also  sleep  by  thousands  at  Harde- 
court  and  Carnoy,  where  the  struggle  was 
so  obstinate,  and  on  all  this  part  of  the 
banks  of  the  Somme,  which  they  have 
bathed  with  their  blood,  where  they  have 
left  their  bones,  to  arrest  the  vandals  of 
Germany ! 

"But  the  day  of  our  departure  and  of  our 


"Home  Service"  17 

forced  evacuation,  was  also  the  prelude  to 
the  destruction  of  Combles ! 

"On  the  28th  of  June,  1916,  after  a  bom- 
bardment which  raged  for  five  days  and  five 
nights,  the  inhabitants  were  obliged  to  leave 
their  unfortunate  town,  abandoning  to  the 
cupidity  of  the  enemy  everything  which  we 
had  been  able  during  the  previous  two  years  to 
retain  in  our  dwellings — everything  we  pos- 
sessed in  the  way  of  furniture,  bedding,  cloth- 
ing, silver,  books,  pictures,  family  heirlooms — 
in  fact  everything  that  was  precious  remain- 
ing to  us.  It  was  only  on  the  follow- 
ing 25th  of  September  that  Combles  was 
finally  occupied  by  the  Anglo-French  troops 
who  took  possession  of  it  after  terrible  strug- 
gles. 

"Fifteen  hundred  wounded  Germans  were 
found  in  the  vast  subterranean  quarters 
twenty  meters  in  depth,  the  entrance  to  which 
was  situated  in  the  center  of  the  town,  and 
more  than  six  hundred  prisoners  were  at  the 
same  time  captured  in  the  borough  which 


1 8  Helping  France 

had  been  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  the 
Allied  troops. 

"The  Germans  retired  to  the  north  towards 
Sailly-Sallisel  and  continued  the  bombard- 
ment of  what  remained  of  Combles,  in  order 
to  hinder  the  advance  of  the  Anglo-French 
armies. 

"  The  town  being  thus  successively  under  the 
fire  and  crushed  by  the  shells  of  both  armies, 
was  converted  into  a  mass  of  ruins,  to  such 
an  extent  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  recog- 
nize the  sites  of  its  principal  houses,  its  public 
monuments,  the  church — several  centuries 
old — the  town  hall,  schools,  squares,  and  old 
streets. 

"For  more  than  two  years,  either  at  Com- 
bles or  in  the  northern  region  to  which  we  were 
evacuated,  and  where  we  were  still  under  the 
German  domination,  I  have  personally  en- 
countered the  same  dangers,  endured  the 
same  sufferings,  and  the  most  trying  vexations 
after  having  lost  practically  all  that  I  pos- 
sessed and  seen  my  family  dispersed,  two  of 


"Home  Service"  19 

my  children  having  been  wounded  and  the 
third  being  at  present  on  the  battle  front. 

"I  appeal  therefore,  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
men, for  your  generous  intervention  in  favor 
of  our  town  of  Combles  and  its  communes 
which,  by  their  long  martyrdom  and  their 
courage,  have  well  deserved  universal  sym- 
pathy. 

"You  will  thus  contribute,  Ladies  and 
Gentlemen  of  Free  America,  of  the  Great  Sis- 
ter Republic,  to  the  renewal  of  our  valiant 
rural  population  and  to  the  re-establishment 
of  Our  France,  with  whom  you  are  entering 
into  the  struggle  for  the  triumph  of  justice, 
of  the  liberty  of  nations  and  of  the  future  of 
humanity." 

Alas!  the  commune  of  Combles,  even  the 
impregnable  "Village  of  Mary"  fell  to  the 
invaders  in  the  spring  of  1918.  But  its 
appeal  is  typical  of  the  touching  confidence  of 
France  in  her  sister  ally.  In  answering  the 
spirit  of  such  an  appeal,  America  has  builded 
even  better  than  she  knew.  She  has  asked, 


20  Helping  France 

through  her  Red  Cross,  to  be  admitted 
into  the  very  heart  of  France,  into  that  place 
doubly  sacred  in  France  from  the  intrusions  of 
strangers — the  home.  And  she  has  been 
doubly  welcomed.  In  the  words  of  Mme. 
Eduard  Fuster,  who  has  given  invaluable 
service  in  guiding  the  policies  of  the  American 
Red  Cross:  "You  have  come  here  not  only 
to  help  us  win  the  war,  but  to  share  with  us 
all  our  burdens,  all  our  sufferings;  those  of 
the  front  and  those  of  the  trenches,  and  those 
also  behind  the  lines.  .  .  .  All  the  victims  of 
war  have  laid  their  problems  before  you,  all 
our  sorrows  have  found  an  echo  in  your 
hearts." 


Old  Fortifications  at  Antibes. 

Reflexions  et  Croquis  »ur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:   Georges  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 


CHAPTER  II 

TO   WIN   THE   WAR 

rTIHE  American  Red  Cross  is,  like  the 
-^  present  American  Army,  young.  Al- 
though the  Geneva  Convention,  called  in  1863, 
was  signed  by  fourteen  nations  in  1864,  Amer- 
ica did  not  sign  it  until  1882,  and  it  was  only 
in  1905  that  the  volunteer  organization  styled 
the  American  Red  Cross  was  established  by 

21 


22  Helping  France 

Act  of  Congress  as  the  official  relief  organiza- 
tion of  the  United  States.  Its  purpose  as 
then  defined  is:  "To  continue  and  carry  out 
a  system  of  national  and  international  relief 
in  time  of  peace  and  to  apply  the  same  in 
mitigating  the  sufferings  caused  by  pestilence, 
famine,  fire,  floods  and  other  great  national 
calamities  and  to  devise  and  carry  on  measures 
for  preventing  the  same." 

But  the  Red  Cross  is  not  so  young  as  the 
American  Army  in  its  intervention  in  France. 
Prior  to  our  entering  the  war,  it  had  already 
its  representative  in  the  field  in  the  form  of  the 
American  Relief  Clearing  House,  through 
which  contributions  in  money  and  in  supplies 
were  shipped  and  distributed  for  two  years. 
The  American  public  was  already  familiar 
with  pleas  on  its  behalf,  such  as  that  made  by 
President  Wilson  in  January,  1917:  "Another 
winter  closes  around  the  great  European 
struggle,  and  with  the  cold,  there  comes 
greater  need  among  soldiers  in  the  fighting 
line,  and  in  the  hospitals,  and  still  more 


A  War  Orphan  of  Brittany. 


To  Win  the  War  23 

among  the  women  and  children  in  ruined 
homes  or  in  exile." 

Yet  it  remained  for  the  declaration  of  war 
to  develop  the  astounding  resources  which 
the  conscience  and  the  imagination  of  the 
American  people  placed  at  the  disposal  of 
the  Red  Cross.  The  preparation  of  the  Army 
was  not  more  swift  nor  more  far  sighted  than 
that  of  its  service  of  mercy.  A  war  council 
of  seven  members,  created  May  10,  1917, 
placed  the  organization  on  a  war  basis.  The 
Chairman  of  that  Council  brought  to  it  a  name 
renowned  in  the  business  world.  The  cam- 
paign drives  of  the  Red  Cross,  resulting  in  the 
collecting  of  $350,000,000,  attest  not  only  the 
generosity,  but  the  confidence  of  the  nation 
in  the  integrity  and  sagacity  of  the  adminis- 
tration of  those  funds.  The  membership  of 
the  organization  leapt  into  the  millions; 
the  American  Red  Cross  became  what  the 
French  were  quick  to  call  it — the  expression 
of  the  heart  of  America  toward  France. 

For  it  was  not  to  our  own  army,  but  to  the 


24  Helping  France 

needs  of  our  Allies,  particularly  of  France,  that 
the  initial  service  of  our  Red  Cross  was  ded- 
icated. To  us,  in  America,  it  seemed  the 
logical,  the  tangible  thing  to  do,  to  send  the 
Red  Cross  personnel  as  an  advance  guard, 
an  earnest  of  the  army  that  was  to  follow. 
The  civilian  activities  of  the  Red  Cross  at 
home,  the  contributions,  already  large,  which 
we  had  made  to  the  relief  of  Belgium  and  of 
France  through  other  agencies,  had  accus- 
tomed us  to  look  upon  civilian  relief  in  a 
foreign  country  as  natural. 

Not  so  was  our  advent  regarded  by  Europe. 
France  welcomed  us,  but  as  something  new, 
unheard  of.  Her  response  was  enthusiastic 
in  proportion  to  her  wonder.  Other  allies 
had  given  of  their  treasure,  and  we  must  never 
forget,  more  largely  than  we,  to  the  same 
cause;  they  had  given  what  we  had  not  yet 
had  the  opportunity  to  do,  their  millions  of 
lives.  But  America  brought  for  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  the  Red  Cross,  a  war  service 
in  aid  of  civilians  as  well  as  of  soldiers, — I 


To  Win  the  War  25 

would  say,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
nations.  Private  societies,  such  as  the  Eng- 
lish Quakers  as  far  back  as  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War  of  1871,  rendered  a  similar  ser- 
vice to  France;  in  France,  on  the  advent  of 
the  Red  Cross,  they  and  many  other  foreign- 
born  organizations  were  already  engaged  in 
civilian  relief.  The  significance  of  the  entry 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  lay  in  the  fact  that 
it  represented  not  a  private  agency,  but  the 
American  Government.  The  President  of  the 
United  States,  as  its  president  as  well,  spoke 
through  it  to  the  people  of  France.  "Wher- 
ever these  Red  Cross  men  and  women  go,"  he 
said,  "they  are  carrying  the  message  that 
Americans  cannot  rest  without  seeking  to 
relieve  such  suffering."  The  spirit  with  which 
they  went  to  that  service  is  equally  illus- 
trated in  the  charge  given  by  the  Chairman 
of  the  War  Council  to  one  of  the  first  groups 
to  cross  the  ocean:  "Make  the  French  glad 
that  you  have  come." 

Aside  from  the  moral  support  which  was 


26  Helping  France 

doubtless  given  by  the  actual  presence  of  their 
new  ally  in  their  midst — to  which,  from  the 
day  of  our  advent  until  now,  the  French  press 
and  people  give  tribute — there  were  sound 
military  reasons  why  the  Red  Cross  should 
add  civilian  to  battlefield  relief.  War,  never 
confined  to  the  actual  field  of  combat,  has 
always  caused  destruction  of  property,  and 
loss  of  civilian  life.  But  never  before  has 
war  been  organized,  nation  against  nation,  as 
was  the  war  which  Germany  organized  and 
launched  against  the  whole  world. 

When  the  heroic  Mayor  of  Noyon,  that 
ancient  city  where  Charlemagne  was  crowned, 
protested  against  the  infractions  of  the  terms 
of  the  Hague  convention  by  its  German  con- 
querors in  1914,  he  was  told:  "We  are  not 
making  the  war  solely  against  the  French 
Army:  we  are  making  it  against  the  whole  of 
France;  our  aim  is  to  ruin  it,  to  weaken  it 
by  every  means  possible.  You  complain  of 
being  pillaged;  well,  we  consider  every  store, 
every  unoccupied  house  as  belonging  to  us: 


To  Win  the  War  27 

where  there  are  legal  occupants,  we  are  dis- 
posed, by  indulgence,  not  to  take  more  than 
is  necessary  for  the  well-being  of  the  German 
army.  If  we  spare  ever  so  little  the  civil  pop- 
ulation of  the  war,  and  do  not  compel  them  to 
undergo  all  its  consequences,  it  is  because  we 
are  not  barbarians;  such  are  our  methods  of 
war,  the  harder  they  are,  the  more  inexorable, 
the  shorter  will  be  the  war!"* 

It  was  the  realization  of  this  menace,  driven 
home  by  the  violation  of  Belgium,  the  sinking 
of  merchantmen,  the  well-attested  atrocities 
of  Northern  France,  that  arrayed  the  civilized 
world  against  the  outlaw,  Germany.  The 
defense  of  civilization  was  being  made  over 
there,  on  the  plains  of  Picardy,  along  the 
Chemin  des  Dames,  in  the  forests  of  Ardennes, 
at  Verdun. 

"Whatever  may  be  the  character  of  the 
American  Red  Cross  in  time  of  peace,"  said 
the  first  Commissioner  to  France  of  the  Amer- 


*Noyon  pendant  1'occupation  allemande:    Ernest  Noel,  in  La 
Revue  Hebdomadaire. 


28  Helping  France 

ican  Red  Cross,  before  the  Anglo-American 
press  on  September  17,  1917,  "to-day  in  the 
midst  of  this  catastrophe,  its  supreme  func- 
tion is  to  aid  in  every  way  possible  the  winning 
of  the  war.  It  would  be  a  pitiable  and  mis- 
taken conception  to  regard  it  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  charity  at  a  moment  like  this. 
For  three  years  our  Allies  have  taken  upon 
themselves  our  part  in  the  battle.  They  have 
carried  all  the  burden  of  anguish,  they  have 
suffered  all  the  wounds,  they  have  died  for 
our  sakes.  It  is  inevitable  that  some  time 
must  yet  elapse  before  our  troops  can  play 
their  part  seriously  in  the  trenches.  Mean- 
time, the  American  organizations  should  claim 
it  not  only  as  a  privilege,  but  as  a  strict  obliga- 
tion, to  do  all  that  is  in  their  power  to  aid  the 
valiant  nations  to  whom  our  people  are  so 
deeply  indebted." 


Noyon,  in  April  1917. 


Reflexions  et  Croquis  sur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:   Georges  Wyba. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  FIELD  OF  OPPORTUNITY 

rflHE  American  Red  Cross  Commission 
•*  arrived  in  France  in  June,  1917.  It 
consisted  of  eighteen  members,  each  con- 
tributing some  special  part  toward  the  great 
end  in  view,  the  winning  of  the  war.  Battle- 
field relief,  it  was  understood,  would  be  ef- 
fected immediately  under  the  supervision  of 
the  War  Department,  but  "civilian  relief 
will  present  a  field  of  increasing  opportunity 


30  Helping  France 

in  which  the  Red  Cross  organization  is  espe- 
cially adapted  to  serve." 

In  the  devastated  area,  which  bounds  the 
horizon  of  the  present  narrative,  the  field 
was  indeed  ample,  and  the  opportunity  ripe. 
One  cannot  picture  wholesale  destruction. 
Not  even  an  eye  witness  of  it,  mile  after  mile, 
and  village  after  village,  can  have  the  con- 
cept of  it  which  would  be  his  were  the  cottage 
razed,  the  village  decimated,  the  region 
ruined,  the  country  fought  for,  his  own.  Not 
only  so,  but  that  part  of  Northern  France 
overtaken  by  perfidy  in  1914,  was,  historically, 
the  home  of  France.  The  modern  names  of 
the  departments  involved:  the  Nord  and  the 
Ardennes,  completely  swallowed  up,  the  Pas- 
de-Calais,  the  Somme,  the  Aisne,  the  Oise, 
the  Meuse,  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle,  and  the 
frontier  of  the  Vosges,  scenes  for  four  years  of 
gigantic  struggle,— these  revolutionary  appella- 
tions lose  completely  their  savour  of  an- 
tiquity. But  let  us  mention  the  provinces  of 
Artois,  of  Picardy,  of  Champagne,  of  Lor- 


The  Field  of  Opportunity       31 

raine,  of  the  He  de  France,  whence  came  the 
very  name  of  the  French  nation,  and  there 
move  before  our  eyes  like  a  pageant  the  me- 
dieval powers,  the  spiritual  dominions,  the 
literary  glory  which  have  made  the  France 
of  to-day.  One  of  our  soldiers,  stationed 
near  Domremy,  was  asked  by  a  Frenchman, 
who  was  showing  him  about,  if  he  knew  Joan 
of  Arc.  "Sure,"  was  the  response,  "I  went 
to  sol""^  "-ith  her."  "And  when  was  that?" 
inquire^  che  astonished  Frenchman.  "In 
1429,"  he  replied.  Whether  many  of  our 
privates,  like  this  one,  have  gone  to  school 
with  French  history  or  not,  the  children  of 
France  have  done  so  generation  by  generation. 
Even  a  geography  is  not  complete  without  its 
political  account  of  the  soil.  Soissons,  Reims, 
the  Marches  of  Lorraine,  the  Santerre  of 
Picardy,  now  laid  in  ruins,  yet  stand  as  rep- 
resentatives of  the  ideals  of  a  race. 

Figures  convey  their  picture  of  economic 
destruction.  The  devastated  area,  in  its 
entirety,  covered — and  covers  at  the  present 


32  Helping  France 

moment — six  thousand  square  miles  of  France. 
It  comprised  that  area  most  thickly  populated, 
richest  in  manufactures,  and  richest  in  agri- 
culture. One  quarter  of  the  wheat  crop  was 
formerly  raised  in  it.  Eighty-seven  per  cent 
of  the  beets  from  which  France  derived  her 
sugar  came  from  it.  2,000,000  people  had  made 
in  it  their  homes.  In  it  were  the*  deposits  of 
iron,  of  potash  and  of  coal,  greedily  coveted 
by  Germany;  so  much  so,  that  the  possession 
of  them  became  that  military  necessity  which 
turned  into  a  scrap  of  paper  the  neutrality 
of  Belgium  and  of  Luxembourg. 

This  area,  varying  with  the  fortune  of  bat- 
tles, consisted,  in  June,  1917,  of  the  territory 
still  in  the  hands  of  the  Germans,  of  the  actual 
front,  and  of  the  territory  from  which  the 
Germans  had  been  driven  out.  The  former 
was  being  cared  for,  as  well  as  it  could  be  in 
captivity,  by  the  Dutch  and  Spanish  dele- 
gates who  took  over  the  operation  of  our  Bel- 
gian Relief  Commission  on  our  entry  into  the 
war.  The  front,  at  least  fifteen  miles  in 


The  Field  of  Opportunity       33 

depth  at  any  given  point,  was  reserved  for 
military  operations.  Back  of  this  front  were 
situated  the  "regions  liberees,"  of  civilian 
relief.  They  extended  in  a  broad  swathe  a 
hundred  miles  long  by  thirty  wide,  up  the 
valley  of  the  Marne.  They  paralleled  the 
road  to  Verdun.  They  lay  in  a  fringe  along 
the  northern  border  of  the  frontier  provinces 
of  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle  and  the  Vosges. 
Most  recently  uncovered,  and  hence  offering 
the  clearest  opportunity,  they  comprised  the 
1580  square  miles  of  the  Somme,  the  Aisne 
and  the  Oise  cleared  of  the  Germans  in  the 
"Great  Retreat"  of  March,  1917.  It  was 
to  this  area  that  the  American  Red  Cross  first 
turned  its  attention.  A  preliminary  survey 
was  made. 

Contrast  may  help  to  picture  what  the 
Commission  saw.  In  a  certain  classic  on 
agriculture,*  may  be  found  this  description 
of  the  regions  through  which  the  Commission- 
ers passed.  "They  comprise  those  orchard 

Albert  Demangeon:  La  Picardie. 


34  Helping  France 

lands,  gardens  and  vineyards  picturesquely 
mingling  with,  or  bordering  a  field  of  wheat,  a 
patch  of  vegetables,  a  bit  of  clover,  a  cluster 
of  vines,  often  tilled  by  the  spade,  by  a  race  of 
petty  farmers.  The  division  of  the  soil  is 
pushed  to  the  extent  that  the  trees  of  the  one 
owner  overhang  the  property  of  the  other; 
beneath  the  tangle  of  apple  trees,  of  pears,  of 
peaches,  of  apricots,  of  plums,  of  cherries  and 
of  nuts  oftentimes  trellised,  are  hidden  a 
thousand  varied  crops  which  succeed  one 
another  without  lapse;  here  the  asparagus 
and  the  grapes  of  Laon;  there  the  artichokes 
and  the  string  beans  of  Noyon,  everywhere,  as 
far  as  Clermont,  all  the  lucrative  products  of 
intensive  culture,  which  have  given  to  the 
valley  of  Therain  between  Clermont  and  Creil 
the  name  of  the  "Vale  of  Gold"  (Vallee 
Dore*e).  Nothing  can  equal  the  charm  of 
those  sunny  and  verdant  slopes,  at  the  same 
time  orchards  and  gardens,  their  roads  deep 
rutted  by  the  coming  and  going  of  the  laborers' 
heavy  boots.  This  aspect  of  nature  fresh 


The  Field  of  Opportunity       35 

and  picturesque,  this  culture  minute  and 
varied,  separates  us  widely  from  those  plains 
of  immense  and  monotonous  toil  where  the 
eye  loses  itself  at  the  horizon  above  the 
fields  of  grain." 

A  writer  of  greater  power  passed  this  way 
in  the  summer  of  1917.  "In  Egypt,  behind 
the  quarries  on  the  Nile,  there  is  a  place  as 
desolate  where  nothing  living  moves.  But 
this  is  France — dear,  rich,  green  France — 
this  scorched  and  arid  desert,  with  the  cruel 
gaping  wound  torn  in  her  fair  side.  This  is 
France — and  it  is  full  summertime!  Weeds 
and  poppies  and  grasses,  poppies  and  grasses 
and  weeds,  trenches  and  broken  wagon  wheels, 
a  nightmare  of  ugly  things.  And  here  a  pitiful 
group  of  crosses — and  there  another,  tens  of 
them,  hundreds  of  them,  close  to  the  road.  .  .  . 

"Come  now  and  look  from  this  mount. 

"A  livid  sky — a  forest  of  blackened  stumps 
and  poles  and  the  interminable  stretch  of 
weeds — nothing  but  this  as  far  as  the  eye  can 
see. 


36  Helping  France 

"Here  you  should  count  three  hundred 
villages,  with  each  a  little  church. 

"Villages? — Churches? — not  even  heaps  of 
stones  remain  to  mark  their  sepulchres. 

"Gone— blotted  out."* 

Yet  this  is  not  the  whole  picture.  There 
are  intermediate  tones.  Not  only  were  there 
such  communes,  like  Combles,  caught  and 
crushed  between  opposing  artillery,  there  were 
the  greater  number  too  quickly  taken  by  the 
Germans  to  have  suffered  bombardment. 
Each,  except  for  certain  centers  of  refuge,  suf- 
fered the  same  fate,  to  be  held  for  a  varying 
period,  to  be  depopulated  by  successive  de- 
portations, to  be  sacked  and  finally  to  be 
systematically  destroyed. 

"The  Germans,  when  they  retreated  in 
March,  1917,  certainly  believed  that  they 
had  thrown  insurmountable  difficulties  in  our 
path.  They  left  behind  them  smashed  bridges 
and  roads  ripped  up  by  tremendous  explosions, 
which  sometimes,  as  in  Licourt,  caused  craters 

*  Elinor  Glyn:  Destruction.    Duckworth  &  Co.,  London. 


A  House  in  Noyon. 

Aprts  le  Recul  Allemand,   Mars  1917.     Noyon,  Guiscard,  Ham:    Armand 
Guiritte.     Vernant  <fc  Dulle,  Imprimeurs,  Paris. 


The  Field  of  Opportunity       37 

fifty  feet  across  and  fifty  feet  deep.  Some 
regions  were  flooded.  Trees  cut  down  across 
the  highways  were  to  be  an  obstacle  to  imme- 
diate pursuit.  J  And  far  behind  the  fighting 
lines,  the  enemy  placed  fields  of  barbed  wire. 
Every  bit  of  ground  which  had  any  strategic 
importance  was  fortified,  trenched  and  camou- 
flaged for  the  eventual  battles  and  for  a  pro- 
longed resistance." 

"They  slyly  prepared  other  ambushes  which 
were  to  add  to  the  effect  of  the  obstacles  in 
the  path  of  the  French  troops.  Their  massing 
of  the  entire  civil  population  which  was  not 
sent  back  to  Germany,  all  the  useless  mouths, 
into  certain  villages  which  were,  .relatively 
speaking,  spared,  was  a  military  maneuver 
whose  true  purpose  was  not  intuitively  recog- 
nized by  our  incurable  and  candid  generosity. 
We  regarded  it  for  a  moment  as  a  sort  of  man- 
ifestation of  German  pity!  But  it  was  all 
brutally  clear  when,  immediately  after  the 
retreat,  in  the  terrible  confusion  of  battle, 
we  had  to  feed  those  home-coming  French 


38  Helping  France 

people  suffering  unimaginable  distress.  Little 
towns  whose  normal  population  was  from 
three  to  five  hundred  saw  these  figures  mul- 
tiplied by  five;  at  Roye  more  than  six  thou- 
sand people  were  without  food;  at  Chauny 
the  frightened  population  at  first  received  our 
troops,  whose  uniform  they  did  not  recog- 
nize, with  stupor;  at  Ham  it  was  again  the 
army  which  had  to  provide  improvised  sup- 
plies. There  was  no  means  of  communica- 
tion; there  was  nothing  on  the  spot,  the  Ger- 
mans having  taken  everything  away;  the 
regions  which  had  been  spared  were  in  total 
isolation  in  the  midst  of  a  desert,  where  noth- 
ing disturbed  the  horrible  solitude  except  the 
whirl  of  neighboring  battles."1 

*Le  Temps,  Jan.  6,  1918. 


Notre  Dame,  From  St.  Jidien-le-Pauvre, 

Reflexions  et  Croquvi  sur  I' Architecture  ou  Pays  da  France:   Georges  Wybo, 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  PLAN:  ORGANIZATION 

SUCH  was  the  immediate  field  of  oppor- 
tunity presented  to  the  American  Red 
Cross.  Its  needs  were  patent.  Housing  was 
necessary,  food  was  necessary,  the  revival  of 
agriculture  and  of  industries  was  necessary. 
What  few  doctors  were  left  in  the  region  had 
been  deported  by  the  Germans;  even  med- 
icines had  been  packed  in  the  great  vans  that 
bore  every  mobile  article  of  value  away.  Doc- 

39 


4O  Helping  France 

tors  were  necessary  for  the  children  and  the 
old  people  insufficiently  nourished  and  ab- 
normally depressed.  The  cure's  had  shared 
the  fate  of  the  doctors.  Spiritual  and  moral 
encouragement,  the  restoration  of  normal 
life — these  were  the  things  most  necessary 
of  all. 

But,  as  has  been  said,  the  American  Red 
Cross  did  not  have  its  chosen  field  to  itself. 
Its  first  problem  of  organization  was  to  deter- 
mine its  relation  to  the  many  agencies  already 
operating  in  the  devastated  area,  some  of  them 
since  the  beginning  of  the  war.  They  grouped 
themselves  in  three  classes:  governmental, 
military,  and  private.  There  was  no  question 
of  the  place  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
regard  to  the  two  former.  It  came  to  France 
by  invitation  from  the  French  Government; 
it  would  work  in  the  army  zone  only  by  con- 
sent of  the  armies  of  occupation.  Its  duty 
was  to  subordinate  its  purpose  to  that  of  the 
government  and  of  the  army,  and  to  place  its 
resources  at  their  disposal.  But  the  third 


The  Plan:  Organization        41 

group,  that  of  private  agencies,  presented 
matter  for  careful  study. 

The  American  societies,  up  to  the  time  of 
the  arrival  of  the  American  Red  Cross,  had 
accomplished  their  work  for  the  French  army 
and  for  French  civilians  under  the  authoriza- 
tion of  the  French  Government.  In  fact,  they 
were  incorporated  in  the  Service  de  Santo"  of 
the  French  Army.  What  was  to  be  the  rela- 
tion between  these  groups,  already  established, 
and  the  American  Red  Cross?  The  status  of 
the  American  Relief  Clearing  House,  the  fore- 
runner and  official  representative  of  the  Red 
Cross  in  France,  was  a  determining  factor  in 
the  policy  finally  adopted. 

This  was  "an  organization  which  came  into 
existence  during  the  early  months  of  the  war, 
for  the  purpose  of  relieving  the  confusion  into 
which  relief  supplies  coming  from  America 
had  been  thrown,  and  of  expediting  their  dis- 
tribution to  those  in  need.  It  was  found  that 
without  some  organization  devoted  especially 
to  these  purposes,  the  relief  of  which  the  suf- 


42  Helping  France 

ferers  were  in  such  urgent  need,  was  sub- 
jected to  great  delay  in  reaching  them;  that 
it  was  frequently  misdirected  through  lack 
of  proper  information  on  the  part  of  the 
senders;  that  through  ignorance  of  the  for- 
malities of  French  ports,  supplies  were  fre- 
quently denied  entry  altogether;  and  that 
quite  as  often  for  various  reasons  many  val- 
uable gifts  were  lost. 

"The  purpose  of  the  organization  is  there- 
fore to  centralize  and  control  as  far  as  pos- 
sible at  Paris  the  receipt  of  all  relief  from 
America  destined  for  France  and  her  Allies,  as 
the  most  convenient  point  for  distribution: 

"To  investigate  the  needs  of  all  localities, 
to  keep  the  New  York  office  informed  as  to 
the  requirements  of  different  districts  and  by 
constant  advice  to  prevent  overlapping  and 
duplication. 

"To  clear  at  all  points  of  entry  all  goods 
consigned  from  America. 

"To  forward  to  destination,  without  undue 
delay,  all  goods  received  and,  through  the 


The  Plan:  Organization        43 

facilities  offered  by  the  French  Government, 
to  expedite  the  transshipment  of  goods  cleared 
from  Port  of  Entry  and  to  require  receipts 
from  consignees  at  point  of  final  destination. 

"To  secure  from  the  French  authorities 
free  transportation  both  by  sea  and  by  rail  hi 
France  of  all  goods  destined  for  relief,  and, 
therefore,  to  minimize  the  expenses  incident 
to  the  work  of  all  relief  societies  co-operating 
with  the  Clearing  House. 

"To  distribute  to  best  advantage,  accord- 
ing to  our  information  as  to  actual  present 
needs,  any  relief  that  may  be  entrusted  to  the 
discretion  of  the  Clearing  House  for  this  pur- 
pose ;  and  to  keep  and  render  strict  account  of 
the  same. 

"The  functions  of  the  Clearing  House 
briefly  are: 

"1.  To  forward  to  destination  all  relief 
supplies  sent  through  it  consigned  to  partic- 
ular societies; 

"2.  To  receive  and  distribute  relief  sup- 
plies where  most  needed; 


44  Helping  France 

"3.  To  receive  money  and  to  purchase 
supplies  either  with  or  without  definite  in- 
structions as  to  distribution; 

"4.  To  provide  these  facilities  free  of  all 
expense  to  the  donors."* 

The  American  Red  Cross  automatically 
absorbed  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House 
and  its  functions.  Its  Director  General  be- 
came the  Director  General  of  the  Red  Cross, 
and  a  number  of  its  prominent  officers  took 
positions  of  responsibility  in  the  new  organi- 
zation. At  the  same  time,  the  policy  of  the 
Red  Cross  toward  all  the  organizations, 
French,  American  or  British,  subsidized  to 
any  degree  by  the  Clearing  House  under- 
went a  radical  change.  Whereas  the  Clearing 
House  had  assumed  the  responsibility  of  for- 
warding supplies  and  money  to  particular 
destinations,  the  Red  Cross  hastened  to  state 
that  it  considered  its  function  to  be  the  im- 
partial distribution  at  its  discretion  of  all 
supplies  sent  from  America  to  the  relief  of 

*  Report. 


The  Plan:  Organization        45 

France.  The  reasons  for  this  change  were 
two-fold.  First,  there  was  great  inequality  of 
distribution  to  the  different  organizations  de- 
pendent on  the  Clearing  House,  varying  with 
the  size  of  the  receiving  society,  and  the 
effectiveness  of  its  propaganda,  rather  than 
with  the  actual  needs  of  the  localities  served. 
Second,  and  more  vital,  there  was  the  cutting 
down  of  transportation  facilities  from  America, 
incident  to  our  active  participation  in  the 
war. 

At  first  only  nine  hundred  tons  per  month 
were  allowed  to  the  American  Red  Cross  for 
all  its  activities,  military  as  well  as  civilian, 
on  United  States  transports,  and  the  maximum 
reached  at  any  time  by  allowance  was  four 
thousand  tons.  Although  this  amount  was 
increased  by  space  paid  for  whenever  possible 
on  regular  merchantmen,  the  average  ship- 
ment per  month  of  Red  Cross  supplies  from 
America  during  the  war,  stands  at  about 
the  latter  figure,  four  thousand  tons.  Not 
only  was  the  Red  Cross  thus  made  account- 


46  Helping  France 

able  to  the  home  government  for  the  amount 
of  its]shipments.  It  had  scrupulous  obligations 
to  the  French  Government,  which,  in  the 
midst  of  its  heavy  transportation  of  men  and 
supplies  for  actual  fighting,  gave  free  trans- 
portation in  the  interior  to  the  supplies  and  the 
personnel  of  the  American  Red  Cross  as  it  had 
done  to  those  of  the  Clearing  House. 

Despite  this  limited  tonnage,  and  the  lim- 
ited railroad  transportation,  the  American 
Red  Cross  was  in  duty  bound  to  greatly  in- 
crease the  volume  of  its  output  over  that  of 
the  Clearing  House.  It  must  go  into  the 
market  to  buy.  But  here  again  were  restric- 
tions; the  Army,  French,  British  or  Amer- 
ican, had  always  the  precedence.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  supplies  and  their  proper 
distribution  assumed  such  importance  as  to 
become  the  crux  of  the  whole  administrative 
problem  of  civilian  relief. 

Naturally,  readjustment  on  the  new  basis 
took  time,  and  designated  shipments  were 
honored  as  such  until  an  agreement  could  be 


The  Plan:  Organization        47 

reached.  But  it  was  the  feeling  of  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  that  the  ideal  to  be  aimed  at 
was  the  absorption  rather  than  the  affiliation 
of  American  relief  agencies.  They  had  as  a 
guide  in  this  policy,  the  centralized  organiza- 
tion of  our  Belgian  Relief  Commission,  which 
had  worked  on  the  German  side  of  the  lines 
in  the  identical  territory  into  which  the  Red 
Cross  was  to  enter.  They  had  in  mind  the  pool- 
ing of  all  resources,  as  was  done  in  the  United 
States  itself.  They  had  found  the  French 
ceuvres  (societies),  excellent  in  themselves, 
working  in  detachment,  the  one  from  the  other. 
"Our  French  Red  Cross  itself  is  represented 
by  three  organizations  which  have  been  asso- 
ciated in  a  common  committee  only  since  the 
beginning  of  the  war,"'  wrote  M.  Firmin 
Roz  in  comparing  it  with  the  American  Red 
Cross.  What  better  service  could  the  De- 
partment of  Civilian  Relief  give  to  French 
societies  having  the  same  aim  as  itself  than  a 
working  example  of  centralized  organization? 

*  In  La  Revue  Hebdomadaire. 


48  Helping  France 

All  American  relief  agencies  for  civilians  were, 
therefore,  invited  to  confer  informally,  with 
the  tentative  idea  of  becoming  integral  parts 
of  the  American  Red  Cross. 

This  plan  did  not  meet  with  success.  It  was 
perhaps  undesirable  that  it  should  have  done 
so.  The  other  societies  had  their  chapters, 
their  clubs,  their  clientele  at  home,  their 
affiliations  with  the  French  Government 
abroad.  Their  founders  had  been  pioneers 
during  our  neutrality,  giving,  many  of  them, 
of  their  private  resources,  as  an  expression  of 
their  passionate  attachment  to  the  cause  of 
France.  Most  of  their  leaders  were  women  of 
influence  and  of  initiative.  Otherwise,  in  the 
midst  of  the  difficulties  which  confronted 
them,  their  organizations  would  never  have 
been  born.  They  had  succeeded,  and  by 
their  success  held  what  the  American  Red 
Cross  had  yet  to  win,  the  confidence  of  the 
French  Government.  They  felt,  with  justice, 
that  they  had  much  to  offer  the  Red  Cross  in 
the  way  of  resources  and  of  experience. 


The  Plan:  Organization        49 

All  this  they  did  offer,  but  they  were  unwilling 
to  give  up  their  identity. 

A  compromise  was  therefore  effected. 
In  the  field  of  civilian  relief,  for  instance,  one 
society,  that  of  the  American  Friends — a  very 
large  group — became  a  department  under  the 
Red  Cross,  but  without  losing  its  name.  An- 
other, the  Smith  College  Relief  Unit,  retained 
both  its  name  and  its  independent  financial 
support,  but  worked  as  a  direct  agent  of  the 
Red  Cross.  A  third,  the  Secours  Anglo- 
Ame"ricain  at  Amiens,  lost  both  its  name  and 
its  outside  support,  its  personnel  becoming 
Red  Cross  workers.  Others,  such  as  the 
American  Fund  for  French  Wounded,  and 
later  the  American  Committee  for  Devastated 
France,  were  loosely  affiliated,  retaining  their 
complete  independence,  receiving  a  monthly 
stipend,  cooperating  in  transportation,  sup- 
plies and  personnel.  With  two  societies,  the 
American  Fund  for  French  Wounded  and 
the  Friends,  the  Red  Cross  made  special  ar- 
rangements as  to  designated  shipments. 


50  Helping  France 

In  general,  however,  the  policy  of  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  crystallized  into  that  of  cooper- 
ation with  existing  societies,  whether  Amer- 
ican, French,  Canadian  or  British.  But,  as 
to  the  two  latter,  it  is  only  fair  to  state  that 
the  relations  of  the  American  Red  Cross  with 
them  are  best  described  as  neighborly,  both 
parties,  with  scrupulous  Anglo-Saxon  inde- 
pendence, returning  all  favors  received.  To- 
ward all  other  agencies,  in  the  words  of  one  of 
the  organizers  of  relief  in  the  devastated 
area,  the  Red  Cross  became,  not  an  oeuvre 
itself,  but  the  "Mother  of  (Euvres."  "We 
have  looked,"  he  writes,  "on  the  liberated 
regions  of  France  as  an  experimental  field 
in  which  to  create  a  personnel  and  a  pro- 
gramme for  the  larger  piece  of  work,  when  all 
of  the  north  of  France  is  disengaged.  To 
this  end  we  have  used,  as  our  agents,  all  pos- 
sible existing  relief  organizations  already  in 
the  field.  We  have  endeavored  to  federate 
these  organizations  in  order  to  deal  with  them 
more  simply,  and  to  plan  for  the  more  im- 


The  Plan:  Organization        51 

portant  demands  which  will  come  to  us  from 
them." 

In  brief,  the  policy  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  in  France  has  been  subordination,  coor- 
dination, cooperation;  subordination  to  the 
French  Government,  the  French  and  allied 
armies,  subordination  always  to  the  needs  of 
our  own  army;  coordination  and  cooperation 
with  all  existing  agencies, — a  policy  by  no 
means  easy  to  attain. 


Bridge  at,  Tours. 


Reflexions  et  Croquin  aur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  da  France:   Georges  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

CHAPTER  V 

THE  PLAN:  ADMINISTRATION 

HAVING  determined  its  broad  lines  of 
policy,  the  American  Red  Cross  created 
the  administrative  machinery  to  carry  them 
out.  Its  main  office  was  located  in  Paris,  the 
center  of  government,  and  of  every  consider- 
able agency  of  relief.  At  its  head  stood  the 
Commissioner  for  France.  Under  him,  mil- 
itary and  civilian  affairs  were  sharply  divided 
into  two  departments.  The  administrator  of 
the  latter  was  styled  the  Director  of  Civilian 

52 


The  Plan:  Administration       53 

Relief.  So  far  as  the  liberated  regions  were 
concerned,  this  department  was  further  sub- 
divided into  three  bureaus:  The  Children's 
Bureau,  occupied  primarily  with  matters  of 
public  health  as  affecting  the  future  citizens 
of  France;  the  Bureau  of  Reconstruction, 
dealing  with  the  repair  of  damaged  houses 
and  architectural  planning,  and  the  Bureau 
of  Relief  and  Economic  Rehabilitation. 

Fortunately  for  the  work  of  the  Depart- 
ment, there  were  available  for  its  personnel 
at  this  time  a  number  of  former  delegates  of 
the  Belgian  Relief  Commission,  who  could  no 
longer  work  in  Belgium  and  France  owing  to 
our  having  become  belligerents  in  the  war. 
They  brought  to  the  Department  not  'only 
valuable  training  in  what  might  be  called 
wholesale  economic  relief,  but  also  in  some 
instances  first-hand  acquaintance  with  the 
area  most  recently  liberated  in  Northern 
France.  The  plan  of  relief  adopted  was 
largely  influenced  by  them,  being  a  modifica- 
tion of  that  previously  worked  out  by  this 


54  Helping  France 

Commission.  It  consisted  of  the  controlling 
office  in  Paris,  quickly  amalgamated  into  the 
Bureau  of  Rehabilitation  and  Relief,  and  field 
delegates  sent  out  from  it  to  definitely  assigned 
areas.  To  make  the  plan  of  operation  clear, 
it  will  be  better  to  consider  this  method  as 
operative  from  September  1,  1917,  to  March 
21,  1918.  On  this  latter  date  occurred  the 
last  German  offensive  which  swept  again  into 
chaos  the  "region  libe're'e." 

It  was  evident  that  material  relief  was  the 
thing  to  be  sent  first  into  that  stricken  coun- 
try. There  was  need  of  tons  of  clothing,  of 
shoes,  of  furniture,  particularly  beds  and  bed- 
ding, of  household  utensils,  agricultural  im- 
plements, stoves,  soap  and  food.  Free  trans- 
portation by  rail  had  been  accorded.  It  re- 
mained to  divide  the  four  invaded  depart- 
ments (the  Oise,  the  Aisne,  the  Somme  and 
the  Pas-de-Calais)  into  districts  centering 
about  warehouses  which  should  distribute 
these  supplies.  Haste  was  important;  sum- 
mer was  turning  into  autumn,  autumn  into 


The  Son  of  a  Soldier,  Paris. 


The  Plan:  Administration       55 

winter — such  a  winter  as  the  invaded  terri- 
tories had  never  seen.  For  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  even  under  the  German  occupa- 
tion, there  had  remained  to  the  unfortunate 
inhabitants  their  homes,  their  furniture,  their 
farms.  Whereas  the  autumn  of  1917  found 
them  free  and  reunited  to  their  country,  on 
the  other  hand,  scarcely  a  family  had  escaped 
its  quota  of  members  sent  into  slavery,  and 
only  a  small  proportion  retained  their  roofs 
above  their  heads. 

With  the  kindly  cooperation  of  pr£fets, 
mayors  and  army  officers,  the  sites  of  the 
warehouses  in  the  north  were  chosen  and 
buildings  secured  at  Amiens,  Ham,  Nesle 
(Somme),  Noyon  (Oise)  and  Soissons  (Aisne). 
The  latter,  the  nearest  point  from  the  great 
central  warehouse  at  Paris,  was  distant  sixty- 
five  miles;  Amiens,  eighty -one  miles  away, 
was  the  farthest  north,  but  Ham  was  thirty- 
six  miles  from  Amiens,  through  which  owing 
to  the  St.  Quentin  salient,  all  freight  to  it  had 
to  be  shipped.  Naturally  these  sites  were 


56  Helping  France 

selected  for  two  reasons;  their  accessibility, 
and  their  importance  to  the  districts  to  be 
served  by  them.  The  capacity  of  these  ware- 
houses gives  some  idea  of  the  amount  of 
freight  handled:  Amiens  (undestroyed)  forty 
carloads,  Ham,  five  carloads,  Nesle,  five  car- 
loads, Noyon,  twelve  carloads,  and  Sois- 
sons,  three  carloads.  But  the  speed  of  opera- 
tion varied  in  these  warehouses  with  the  dif- 
ficulties of  rail  and  motor  transport.  Mili- 
tary maneuvers  always  took  precedence  over 
civilian  freight,  even  to  the  extent  of  tem- 
porary shortage  in  civilian  food.  Despite  the 
danger  from  bombing,  and  the  always  pos- 
sible German  advance,  the  accumulation  of 
supplies  in  the  warehouses,  therefore,  seemed 
advisable.  The  value  of  the  goods  so  stored 
against  emergencies  in  March,  1918,  is  inter- 
esting in  this  connection:  Amiens,  Fr.  300,000; 
Ham,  197,568.10;  Nesle,  137,000;  Noyon, 
208,834,  and  Soissons,  334,947.94. 

Yet   the   warehouses   emptied   themselves 
with  astonishing  rapidity.     Attached  to  each 


The  Plan:  Administration       57 

was  a  head  warehouse  man  and  a  transport 
service  of  from  one  to  five  trucks,  with  drivers, 
and  a  passenger  Ford.  Under  the  Red  Cross 
direction  worked  a  force  of  men  usually  as- 
signed by  the  French  Army  for  unloading  and 
reloading  goods.  The  value  of  this  transport 
service  alone  in  a  zone  where  there  were  prac- 
tically no  private  conveyances,  where  every 
automobile  had  to  be  militarized,  and  where 
gasoline  could  be  obtained  only  on  an  army 
order  and  then  at  a  cost  of  six  francs  a  litre, 
can  hardly  be  overestimated.  Next  to  the 
relief  supplies  themselves,  transportation  was 
the  most  essential  service  rendered  by  the 
Red  Cross  in  the  regions  devastees. 

Yet  the  duties  of  the  four  delegates  to  whom 
the  warehouses  and  their  staffs  were  assigned 
comprised  much  more  than  the  mere  distri- 
bution of  relief.  The  instructions  from  the 
central  office  to  the  delegate  were  as  follows: 

1.  To  reside  in  his  district. 

2.  To  establish  friendly  relations  with  all 
officials,  civil  and  military,  in  his  district. 


58  Helping  France 

3.  To  study  and  report  upon  means  of  com- 
munication and  transportation. 

4.  To  study  and  report  upon: 

(a)  The  amount  of  destruction  caused  by 
the  war. 

(b)  The  number  of  civilians  who  are  back 
and  the  rapidity  with  which  they  are  return- 
ing. 

(c)  The  condition  of  those  who  are  back  and 
how  they  live  and  what  they  do. 

(d)  Organization   and   range   of   all   relief 
machinery  in  the  field,  including  that  of  the 
government. 

5.  To  establish  friendly  relations  with  other 
organizations  and  through  them  aid  the  civil 
population  in  such  ways  as  seem  desirable 
and  feasible. 

6.  To  have  general  oversight  of  the  ware- 
house in  his  district  and  cooperate  with  the 
warehouse  department. 

In  other  words,  as  the  head  of  the  Bureau 
wrote  six  months  later:  "From  the  start  we 
have  tried  to  impress  upon  the  oeuvres  the 


The  Plan:  Administration       59 

American  Red  Cross  point-of-view  that  our 
effort  is  not  intended  as  simple  charity,  but 
as  a  direct  contribution  to  the  rehabilitation 
of  the  invaded  departments  of  France;  that 
we  do  not  intend  to  assume  any  part  of  the 
normal  burden  of  poor  relief  in  these  depart- 
ments; that  our  help  is  intended  to  set  war- 
sufferers  on  their  feet  and  to  make  them  self- 
respecting,  independent  and  productive  cit- 
izens; that  it  is  important  for  the  future 
as  well  as  for  the  present  that  beneficiaries  of 
American  Red  Cross  aid  should  know  that  it 
is  America  which  is  helping  them — the  same 
America  which  is  their  militant  Ally." 

It  will  be  seen  that  a  delegate  was,  in  his 
way,  an  ambassador  from  America  to  his 
province,  and  in  need  of  special  qualifications 
of  tact,  of  sympathy,  of  decision.  It  is  the 
delegates,  not  only  in  the  devastated  area,  but 
in  any  department,  who  have  made  the  living 
history  of  the  civilian  relief  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  in  France. 


Public  Fountain  at  Noyon. 


Rtflexions  ei  Croquis  sur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:  Oeorgea  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  PLAN:  COOPERATION 

THE  first  delegate  to  reach  his  field  was, 
naturally,  the  delegate  assigned  to  the 
district  most  accessible,  that  radiating  from 
Noyon,  in  the  Oise.  He  established  himself 
there  in  the  first  week  of  September,  1917. 
There  were  already  many  agencies  which  had 
preceded  him,  since  this  area  had  been  rapidly 
cleared  in  March,  and  was  well  behind  the 
lines.  These  agencies  were  those  of  the  Third 

60 


The  Plan:  Cooperation         61 

French  Army,  those  of  the  Government,  rep- 
resented by  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior,  the 
Ministry  of  Agriculture  and  the  Prefecture 
of  the  Department,  and  private  societies. 
Of  these  latter,  one  was  American  and  six 
were  French.  Between  the  private  societies 
and  the  Government,  however,  there  were 
connecting  links,  through  the  Comite*  du 
Secours  National,  attached  to  the  Ministry 
of  the  Interior,  which  federalized  and  sub- 
sidized French  activities  of  relief,  both  public 
and  private;  and,  more  directly,  for  all  so- 
cieties, through  a  special  sous-prefet  repre- 
senting the  Ministry,  and  appointed  as  liaison 
officer  in  each  department  of  the  invaded 
territory  between  the  French  Army,  the 
relief  organizations  and  the  Government. 
After  all,  it  was  the  Army,  reaching  up 
through  the  Ministry  of  War,  which  governed 
this  territory  by  martial  law,  and  it  was  the 
Army  which  assigned  to  each  agency  its  sec- 
tor of  relief.  At  the  head  of  this  civilian 
service  for  the  Third  Army  was  Captain  Pal- 


62  Helping  France 

lain,  stationed  at  Noyon.  It  will  be  seen 
that  the  stage  was  well  set  for  the  operation  of 
Red  Cross  policy. 

In  a  book  of  this  scope,  it  would  be  both 
impossible  and  inappropriate  to  enter  upon  a 
description  of  the  intricate  yet  fascinating 
schemes  of  relief  worked  out  between  the 
various  departments  of  the  French  Govern- 
ment, the  various  corps  of  the  French  Army, 
the  various  prefectures,  and  the  ceuvres,  in 
the  devastated  area.  Yet  it  would  be  equally 
impossible  to  understand  the  course  of  the 
American  Red  Cross  in  any  given  district 
without  some  grasp  of  the  main  principles 
which  underlay  all  the  variations,  and  de- 
fined the  limits  within  which  it  was  free  to 
operate.  It  is  only  fair  to  state  that  the 
French,  masterly  in  their  strategy  of  war, 
have  been  equally  masterly  in  their  concep- 
tion of  organized  relief.  And  if  we,  in  our 
American  impatience,  have  sometimes  chafed 
at  the  "red  tape"  of  this  organization,  it 
is  perhaps  only  because,  drained  of  their 


The  Plan:  Cooperation         63 

resources  by  the  demands  of  military  cam- 
paigns, whose  thunders  often  shook  the  fields 
reclaimed,  the  French  Army  and  the  French 
Government  were  unable  to  carry  out  their 
ideals.  Four  years  of  stupendous  warfare 
had  tested  not  only  the  methods,  but  the  spir- 
itual and  material  capital  of  the  French 
nation.  The  greatest  struggle,  as  all  the 
world  knows  now,  was  yet  to  be  made,  in  the 
campaigns  of  1918.  If,  therefore,  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  has  made  a  contribution  of 
value  to  France  in  this  struggle,  it  is  not  so 
much  in  the  domain  of  organization  as  it  is 
in  that  of  resources,  both  of  personnel  and  of 
supplies,  which  enabled  existing  organizations 
to  perform  their  work. 

The  practical  scheme  of  reconstruction  put 
in  operation  by  the  Third  French  Army  was 
in  accordance  with  the  principles  laid  down 
by  General  Lyautey  for  a  friendly  army  of 
occupation  in  a  ravaged  territory.  It  was 
placed  in  charge  of  a  man  of  large  affairs,  Cap- 
tain Pallain  being  the  son  of  the  President  of 


64  Helping  France 

the  Bank  of  France.  It  comprised  (1)  food 
supply,  (2)  actual  rebuilding,  (3)  plowing, 
seeding,  and  supplying  of  farm  animals,  (4) 
sanitation.  In  short,  while  in  the  midst  of 
an  active  campaign,  it  set  itself  to  repair  what 
the  Germans  had  destroyed. 

Put  in  another  way,  it  supplied  transport, 
labor,  and  the  functions  of  local  government. 
Sectors  containing  each  an  engineer,  a  phy- 
sician, and  an  agricultural  expert  were  given 
charge  of  stated  areas.  Labor  was  supplied 
immediately  back  of  the  lines  by  soldiers  en 
repos,  by  Moroccans  or  Annamites  whose  red 
turbans  or  conical  hats  lent  a  curious  oriental 
color  to  the  dun  landscape,  or,  further  back, 
by  hundreds  of  German  prisoners.  By  au- 
tumn, in  the  region  of  Noyon,  twelve  hundred 
hectares  or  three  thousand  acres,  had  been 
plowed  and  planted.  In  all,  in  the  region 
occupied  by  the  Third  Army,  four  thousand 
five  hundred  houses  were  repaired  and  five 
hundred  built. 

The  same  care  of  civilians  was  taken  on  the 


The  Plan:  Cooperation         65 

British  side  of  the  lines.  It  was  a  military 
necessity,  an  offset  to  the  war  which  Germany 
made  upon  civilians.  The  German  Army  had 
had  its  sectors  also,  of  destruction  and  not  of 
construction.  To  them  were  attached  skilled 
mechanics  who  knew  the  essential  parts  of 
agricultural  machinery,  and  removed  the 
same  part  from  each  machine  in  their  line 
of  retreat.  There  were  expert  foresters  who 
calculated  to  a  nicety  the  girdling  of  fruit 
trees.  There  were  chemists,  who  gauged  the 
charges  of  explosives,  and  poisoned  the  wells. 
The  field  of  this  economic  combat  of  nations 
was  the  richest  of  wheat  lands, — and  food 
would  win  the  war.  It  followed  that  the 
allied  armies  of  occupation  must  organize 
their  civilian  sectors  for  salvage  in  this  new 
form  of  war. 

But  as  the  allied  armies  advanced  their 
trenches,  the  land  behind  them  became  safer 
for  civilians.  The  departmental  government 
and  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  took  over 
more  and  more  of  its  duties  from  the  Army. 


66  Helping  France 

For  example,  a  daily  stipend  was  allotted  by 
the  Government  to  any  family  which  had  suf- 
fered loss  of  property  or  of  wage  earners. 
This  was  calculated  to  cover  the  bare  cost  of 
food,  which  was  distributed  by  the  depart- 
mental machinery.  Depots  were  established 
of  the  most  essential  articles  of  furniture, 
which  were  given  out  through  the  mayors  of 
communes.  Each  allotment  bore  a  stated 
value,  and  this  was  to  be  deducted  from  a 
post-war  settlement  of  damages  to  be  paid  by 
the  Government.  Cooperative  grocery  stores 
were  also  established,  and,  under  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture,  associations  of  farmers 
who  clubbed  together  to  avail  themselves  of 
government  tractors  and  government  labor  in 
the  plowing  of  their  land.  Most  important 
of  all,  the  Government  made,,, transported 
and  allocated  temporary  shacks  for  the  housing 
of  the  civilian  population,  the  labor  for  the 
putting  up  of  which  was  furnished  largely  by 
the  Army.  In  all  of  this  period  of  transition 
from  military  to  civil  government,  the  special 


The  Plan:  Cooperation         67 

sous-pre"fet  already  mentioned  was  the  con- 
necting link  between  them. 

One  might  question  the  need  of  private 
relief  in  a  field  so  carefully  covered  by  gov- 
ernment agencies,  were  it  not  that  the  Gov- 
ernment welcomed  and  made  a  place  for  them 
in  its  staggering  task.  It  was  not  the  Gov- 
ernment, but  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of 
Dunkerque  which  stored  there  in  anticipa- 
tion of  the  allied  advance,  the  first  supplies 
of  food  rushed  to  the  civilians  of  the  liberated 
regions.  In  the  eastern  zone,  it  was  the 
Secours  d'Urgence  that  performed  a  like  ser- 
vice. Warerooms  were  assigned  to  various 
societies  in  Paris,  and  a  transport  service 
placed  at  their  disposal  by  the  Army.  The 
very  names  of  the  French  oeuvres  are  indic- 
ative of  the  emergency  which  created  them 
and  of  the  hold  they  have  on  the  sympathy 
of  the  public  which  supports  them.  There 
are,  for  instance,  the  Abri  (Shelter),  the  Bon 
Gite  (Good  Lodging),  the  Armoire  Lorraine 
(Wardrobe  of  Lorraine),  the  Renaissance  des 


68  Helping  France 

Foyers  (the  Rebirth  of  the  Homes),  the 
Village  Reconstitue"  (the  Village  Rebuilt),  the 
Aisne  DeVaste*e  (the  Devastated  Aisne),  the 
Secours  d'Urgence  (Emergency  Relief).  At 
the  head  of  them  all,  in  point  of  age  and  of 
prestige,  are  the  Secours  aux  Blesses  Mili- 
taires,  the  Union  des  Femmes  de  France  and 
the  Association  des  Dames  de  France,  the 
three  societies  which  make  up  the  French 
Red  Cross.  All  loosely  federated  under  a 
liaison  officer  between  the  Ministry  of  War 
and  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior,  it  remained 
for  these  societies  to  work  out  their  individual 
cooperation  in  accordance  with  the  kind  of 
help  with  which  the  one  could  supplement  the 
other. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  history  of  one  of  the 
French  societies  represented  in  the  district 
assigned  to  the  Red  Cross  delegate  in  the 
Oise,  that  known  as  the  Comit6  de  Baboeuf. 
The  village  of  Baboeuf  was  destroyed  by  the 
Germans,  and  with  it,  the  Chateau  belonging 
to  its  chief  councilor.  His  wife  had  a  friend 


Ruins  of  Contalmaison,  Somme. 


The  Plan:  Cooperation         69 

in  Paris,  a  member  of  the  Secours  aux  Blesses 
Militaires  of  the  French  Red  Cross.  She 
interested  her  in  Baboeuf.  This  was  the  be- 
ginning of  the  small  ceuvre  which  was  later 
taken  under  the  patronage  of  the  Secours  aux 
Blesses  Militaires.  Its  plan  of  operation  was 
simple.  The  first  report  reads :  "Some  nurses 
of  the  S.  S.  B.  M.  came  to  Babceuf  in  May, 
1917,  to  be  the  bond  of  union  between  the  soci- 
eties of  mercy  at  a  distance  and  the  unfor- 
tunate populations."  In  the  beginning,  lacking 
means  of  transport,  the  establishment  at 
Baboeuf  could  act  only  in  a  very  limited 
sector.  Colonel  Barry,  of  the  British  Red 
Cross,  then  placed  at  their  disposal  a  small 
truck  and  a  driver.  From  this  beginning, 
their  dependent  villages  grew.  Their  fur- 
niture was  donated  to  them  for  distribution 
by  the  Bon  Gite  from  its  central  reservoir  in 
Paris.  Twelve  other  societies,  representing 
five  nationalities  and  three  religious  faiths — 
Protestant,  Hebrew  and  Catholic — cooper- 
ated with  them,  some  giving  clothing,  others 


70  Helping  France 

cloth,  and  others  farm  animals.  Last,  but 
not  least,  the  Comite"  hired  a  gang  of  work- 
men and,  with  the  help  of  the  Army,  repaired 
its  villages. 

With  such  a  spirit  of  cooperation  already 
abroad,  it  was  easy  for  the  delegate  of  the 
American  Red  Cross  to  make  himself  wel- 
come. He  represented,  in  their  eyes,  one 
more  cooperating  agency.  But  there  was 
this  difference  between  the  American  Red 
Cross  and  all  other  societies  in  the  field.  It 
was  its  purpose  to  cooperate  impartially  with 
all.  Not  only  so,  but  in  an  unofficial  capacity 
to  influence  the  methods  employed  in  the 
giving  of  relief,  by  selecting  the  agencies  which 
should  be  the  distributors  of  its  supplies.  In 
every  case,  the  watchword  was  passed  on  from 
headquarters  to  avoid  giving  as  a  charity,  to 
remember  that  the  ultimate  consumer  was  a 
self-respecting  citizen,  rendered  temporarily 
helpless,  but  only  temporarily,  by  the  mis- 
fortunes of  war.  Even  though  the  inhabi- 
tants left  in  the  invaded  regions  were,  for  the 


The  Plan:  Cooperation         71 

most  part,  women,  old  people  and  children, 
they  came  of  a  hardy  race  inured  to  toil,  ac- 
customed for  hundreds  of  years  to  the  wastage 
of  contending  armies.  In  nearly  every  case 
they  had  rescued  their  savings,  those  peasant 
savings  which,  as  all  the  world  knows,  are  the 
"long  stocking"  of  the  wealth  of  France. 

The  economic  effort  of  the  French  Govern- 
ment was  in  accord  with  this  Red  Cross  policy 
of  helping  the  unfortunates  to  help  them- 
selves. And  in  the  devastated  regions  the 
delegates  of  the  Red  Cross  had  also  a  valuable 
precedent  in  their  favor.  The  Belgian  Relief 
Commission,  operating  in  the  same  territory 
behind  the  German  lines,  had  made  it  a  rule 
to  sell  for  a  nominal  sum  rather  than  to  give 
outright.  The  smallest  peasant  understood 
and  approved  a  plan  which  saved  him  from 
humiliation.  It  was  recognized  as  the  Amer- 
ican way. 


Municipal  Offices  at  Urrugne. 


Reflexions  et  Croquis  sur  V Architecture  au  Pays  d»  France:   Georges  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 


CHAPTER  VII 

COOPERATION   IN   PRACTICE 

OOPERATION  is  a  large  word  on  paper, 
and  looms  larger  in  practice.  Applied  to 
the  district  manned  by  the  American  Red 
Cross  delegate,  it  represented  over  2000 
square  miles  of  territory  and  approximately 
150,000  souls.  The  means  at  his  command 
were  (1)  a  warehouse,  yet  to  be  chosen  and 
stocked,  (2)  a  Ford  passenger  car,  and  later, 
a  camionette,  (3)  a  warehouse  man,  and  later, 


Cooperation  in  Practice         73 

together  with  the  camionette,  a  secretary,  and 
a  chauffeur.  Noyon,  his  base  of  operations, 
was  at  the  time  of  his  advent,  and  up  to 
the  time  of  the  armistice,  the  railhead  on  the 
main  line  from  Paris  to  St.  Quentin.  Fifteen 
miles  back,  at  Compiegne,  were  the  grand 
headquarters  of  the  French  Army;  from  fifteen 
to  twenty-five  miles  away  in  a  sweeping  semi- 
circle to  the  north  and  to  the  east  extended 
the  front  line.  Noyon  figured  in  the  plan  of 
Germany  as  the  gate  on  the  direct  road  to 
Paris;  conversely,  it  was  to  the  French  their 
gateway  for  troops,  supplies  and  ammunition 
going  up  into  the  Somme.  Camions  in  hun- 
dreds and  thousands,  cavalry,  batteries  of 
seventy-fives,  steady  marching  infantry,  blue 
devils,  convoys  of  donkeys  used  to  carry  am- 
munition under  fire,  flocks  of  sheep,  the 
whizzing  cars  of  officers, — all  passed  like  a 
pageant  through  Noyon.  Nor  were  the  sounds 
of  combat  absent.  German  aeroplanes,  well 
aware  of  the  activities  centering  in  their  former 
stronghold,  visited  it  nearly  every  day.  Bombs 


74  Helping  France 

were  dropped,  trains  were  wrecked,  and  the 
bullets  of  air  battles,  taking  place  almost  out 
of  sight  in  the  blue  sky  above,  came  dropping 
down  in  the  city  streets. 

Naturally,  civilian  affairs  took  secondary 
place  in  the  matter  of  transport.  Yet  the 
army  in  the  midst  of  its  campaign  set  aside  an 
efficient  camion  service  from  Noyon  to  carry 
civilian  supplies.  In  this  way,  Noyon  was  the 
center  of  civilian  as  well  as  of  military  activity 
for  the  neighborhood,  and  all  the  relief  agen- 
cies radiated  from  it.  These  latter  dotted 
the  ruined  countryside  at  irregular  intervals, 
from  Golancourt  in  the  Somme,  to  Senlis,  the 
southernmost  point  of  German  devastations 
in  the  Oise,  taking  in,  on  the  east,  a  section 
only  five  miles  from  the  front  line  trenches  at 
Villequier-Aumont,  in  the  Aisne.  At  Golan- 
court was  located  a  Friends'  Unit,  composed 
of  both  British  and  American  workers;  at 
Guiscard,  a  distributing  station  of  the  Renais- 
sance des  Foyers,  at  Babceuf,  twelve  miles 
west  of  Noyon,  the  Comite"  already  men- 


Cooperation  in  Practice         75 

tioned,  at  Ribe*court,  Lassigny  and  Noyon 
itself  advance  posts  of  the  Village  Recon- 
stititue",  at  Chiry-Ourscamp  the  nurses  of  the 
Villages  Libe*re*s,  and  at  Villequier-Aumont, 
nearest  of  all  to  the  lines,  an  American 
women's  unit,  the  Philadelphia  Committee  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Emergency  Aid.  All,  it  will 
be  noted,  had  located  their  main  posts  of 
relief  in  the  villages.  All  were  bending  their 
energies  to  the  revival  of  agriculture  in  this, 
the  richest  agricultural  area  of  France.  The 
colony  at  Golancourt,  twelve  strong,  was 
engaged  in  actual  plowing,  planting  and  re- 
stocking of  farms;  the  Philadelphia  Com- 
mittee with  a  personnel  averaging  the  same 
number,  charged  itself  with  the  rehabilita- 
tion and  reconstruction  of  five  villages,  in- 
cluding the  building,  equipping  and  teaching 
of  two  schools;  the  French  societies  with  a 
smaller  personnel  and  practically  no  trans- 
portation, worked  a  larger  area,  giving  rather 
emergent  relief. 

This  personnel  consisted  of  visiting  nurses, 


76  Helping  France 

settled,  two  by  two,  in  their  districts.  In 
addition,  the  Villages  Libe*re*s  had  a  phy- 
sician. Yet  this  does  not  convey  to  an  Amer- 
ican an  exact  idea  of  the  type  of  work  accom- 
plished. In  the  first  place,  France  has  no 
trained  nurses,  in  the  same  sense  that  we  have 
in  America.  Most  of  the  nurses,  whether 
belonging  to  the  Secours  aux  Blesses  Mil- 
itaires,  to  the  Femmes  de  France,  or  to  the 
Dames  de  France,  are  ladies  of  social  stand- 
ing, of  intelligence  and  of  unselfish  devotion, 
who  volunteer  in  this  service.  Their  role  in 
the  devastated  area  would  correspond  more  to 
that  of  Sisters  of  Charity  with  us.  As  in  the 
case  of  the  Babceuf  Comite",  they  were  pri- 
marily distributing  agents  of  societies  at  a 
distance.  Their  barracks  contained  besides 
dispensaries,  dormitories  for  the  shelterless 
returning  refugees.  They  were  oases  of  moral 
and  social  inspiration  in  their  communities. 
These  societies  naturally  became  the  largest 
distributors  of  American  Red  Cross  supplies. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  post  at  Lassigny. 


Cooperation  in  Practice         77 

For  two  years  and  a  half,  Lassigny,  situated 
on  the  heights  above  Noyon,  had  been  swept 
by  the  cross  fire  of  two  opposing  armies.  The 
gently -rounded  slopes  about  it,  originally  cov- 
ered with  copses,  lie  denuded,  scarred  with 
intricate,  deep-gashed  trenches,  bristled  by 
occasional  trees,  skeletons  of  the  once  lovely 
woods,  from  which  even  the  bark  is  stripped 
bare.  In  Lassigny,  so  total  had  been  the 
destruction  of  its  houses  that  in  May  1917 
only  two  of  its  nine  hundred  inhabitants  were 
back.  Yet  the  poor  remnant  of  its  popula- 
tion continued  to  increase,  existing  in  cellars, 
until  by  December  one  hundred  and  seventy 
had  returned.  Barracks,  given  by  the  Gov- 
ernment, were  erected  by  the  Army.  Con- 
spicuous among  them  was  the  blue-painted 
headquarters  of  the  Village  Reconstitue",  set 
at  the  crossroad.  Here  two  courageous  nurses 
of  the  Union  des  Femmes  de  France  distrib- 
uted the  succor  provided  by  their  subsidizing 
agencies.  Two  cows  furnished  milk,  which 
was  given  to  undernourished  children;  a 


78  Helping  France 

vegetable  garden  was  planted,  hens  and  rab- 
bits for  the  restocking  of  farms  were  raised. 
With  the  help  of  one  sewing  machine,  the 
revival  of  industry  began.  A  workroom  for 
all  the  women  within  walking  distance  of 
Lassigny  was  established. 

The  opening  of  workrooms  was  one  of  the 
functions  of  the  French  societies,  notably  of 
the  Femmes  de  France,  most  helpful  to  the 
morale  of  the  devastated  areas.  No  one  was 
quicker  than  the  French  themselves  to  see 
the  danger  of  pauperizing  the  unfortunate 
peasants.  A  regular  scale  of  wages  was 
arranged.  Or,  did  the  worker  desire,  she 
could  have  the  finished  products,  up  to  the 
estimated  value  of  her  work.  Before  the 
advent  of  the  American  Red  Cross  at  Noyon, 
the  Baron  Rothschild  had  supplied  both  the 
material  and  the  market  for  these  wares.  His 
was,  in  fact,  a  very  interesting  experiment  in 
social  economics.  He  supplied  material  at 
cost,  bought  at  a  fixed  price,  and  sold  again  at 
a  commercial  rate  in  Paris,  the  garments  made. 


Cooperation  in  Practice         79 

In  addition,  he  had  established  a  store,  in 
the  old  archiepiscopal  palace  at  Noyon,  where 
one  could  buy  household  necessities  at  cost 
also,  and  a  depot  for  the  setting  up  of  chains  of 
grocery  stores.  His  idea  was,  not  profit,  but  a 
business  which  should  support  itself  and  at 
the  same  time  render  an  invaluable  service  to 
a  community  absolutely  without  stores  or 
markets  or  merchandise. 

The  American  Red  Cross  was  able  to  aug- 
ment quickly  the  amount  of  material  fur- 
nished to  the  workrooms  thus  established,  and 
to  do  it  without  cost.  It  came  at  a  time  when 
the  Baron's  experiment  was  drawing  to  a 
close,  owing  to  the  resumption  of  normal  trade. 
In  place  of  one  sewing  machine,  it  gave  as 
many  as  were  needed.  The  circle  at  Lassigny 
grew  under  this  stimulus  from  twenty  mem- 
bers to  seventy-five.  Perhaps  with  the  idea 
of  lessening  gossip  and  bickering,  a  phono- 
graph was  supplied.  But,  most  important  of 
all,  the  American  Red  Cross  was  able  to  give 
back  to  Lassigny  its  wells.  Not  only  were  the 


8o  Helping  France 

waters  of  Lassigny  rendered  undrinkable,  as 
were  all  the  wells  of  the  devastated  area,  by 
the  shoveling  in  of  filth;  they  were  filled  to 
the  top  and  grassed  over.  One  could  only 
guess  where  the  wells  had  been.  German 
prisoners  dug  out  the  wells  in  time,  and  the 
water  was  analyzed  by  army  chemists  and 
pronounced  fit  to  drink.  But  there  were  no 
pumps  in  Lassigny  until  the  Red  Cross  bought 
them  in  Paris,  transported  them,  and  set  them 
up. 

Naturally,  the  Red  Cross  delegate  was  the 
recipient  of  many  requests  for  aid.  All  the 
Red  Cross  asked  was  to  be  of  service.  Hence, 
not  long  after  the  arrival  of  the  delegate,  the 
sous-prefet  stationed  at  Noyon  suggested 
that  a  small  portable  sawmill  would  be  of  the 
greatest  help  in  furthering  the  repair  of 
houses,  so  essential  to  the  return  of  the  popu- 
lation. Along  the  highways  which,  every- 
where in  France,  are  arched  with  stately  trees, 
the  Germans  had  left  behind  them  thousands 
of  felled  trunks.  Nor,  it  is  interesting  to  note, 


Cooperation  in  Practice         81 

were  most  of  these  felled  across  the  road  to 
serve  as  barricades.  Like  lines  of  soldiers 
mowed  down  by  opposing  barrages  they  lie, 
mile  after  mile,  their  hacked  bases  to  the  road- 
side, their  once  green  tops  to  the  fields.  The 
American  Red  Cross  installed  a  circular  steam 
saw  to  cut  these  trees;  the  American  Friends' 
Unit  furnished  the  man  to  run  it,  and  the 
lumber  went  to  make  the  barracks  for  the  vil- 
lage of  Tracy-le-Mont. 

[  The  civilian  authorities  as  rapidly  as  pos- 
sible took  over  more  and  more  of  the  admin- 
istration of  the  Oise  from  the  army.  Their 
programme  of  relief  centered  in  an  agricultural 
association  of  the  farmers  into  groups  known 
as  cooperatives.  The  purpose  was  to  band 
together  a  sufficient  number  of  the  small 
farmers  who  abound  in  this  region  to  allow  of 
the  plowing  of  the  land  by  tractor  or  by  teams 
of  horses  and  plows  owned  or  rented  in  com- 
mon. The  difficulty  of  inducing  the  peasant 
farmers  to  enter  into  any  such  arrangement 
was  great.  Each  had  been  brought  up  for 


82  Helping  France 

generations  to  be  tenacious  of  his  own,  to  be 
independent  of  his  fellows.  And  now,  at  a 
time  when  landmarks  were  destroyed,  and 
the  very  title  to  his  property  in  all  probability 
lost,  he  was  asked  to  level  what  was  left  of 
his  boundaries,  to  entrust  a  tithe  of  his 
hardly  saved  money  to  the  keeping  of  others. 
At  a  critical  moment,  the  American  Red  Cross 
was  able  to  present  thirty -five  of  these  cooper- 
atives with  a  plow  apiece  as  tangible  evidence 
of  some  advantage  to  be  derived  from  the 
scheme.  At  Golancourt,  again,  the  plow  was 
in  the  hands  of  the  cooperative,  the  horses 
of  the  Friends'  Unit  were  ready  to  plow,  but 
there  was  lack  of  oats.  It  was  not  only  that 
oats  were  lacking;  it  was  strictly  forbidden 
to  use  them  for  fodder,  as  the  Government  was 
hoarding  them  for  planting.  But  the  Red 
Cross  was  able  to  supply  oats. 

School  furniture  and  subsidies  to  replace 
school  equipment  were  another  form  of  Red 
Cross  aid.  For  the  Germans,  in  all  the  coun- 
try artificially  destroyed  by  them,  wreaked 


Cooperation  in  Practice         83 

a   special    spite   upon   churches,   town  halls 
and  schools. 

Interesting  as  were  the  indirect  methods  of 
aid  consistently  adhered  to  by  the  American 
Red  Cross  in  the  Oise,  it  is,  after  all,  in  direct 
contact  that  human  interest  always  lies.  The 
appeals  made  to  the  Red  Cross  delegate  were 
turned  over  by  him  to  the  proper  source  of 
help.  But  in  passing  through  his  hands, 
they  left  him  with  a  knowledge  that  he  was 
fulfilling  in  his  way  a  duty  very  dear  to  the 
hearts  of  the  French.  An  adjutant  in  a 
French  Army  Corps  writes  him:  "I  have  the 
honor  to  call  to  your  benevolent  attention  the 
situation  of  the  family  living  at  C —  in  the 
canton  of  Lassigny.  During  a  tour  of  the 
front  in  the  region  most  recently  liberated,  I 
was  able  to  substantiate  the  following  facts: 
The  village,  counting  about  five  hundred 
hearths  is,  so  to  speak,  entirely  demolished, 
the  few  habitations  still  standing  are  open  to 
the  winds,  the  roofs,  in  spite  of  the  hasty 
repairs  made  by  the  Army,  let  in  water  every- 


84  Helping  France 

where.  Mme.  X —  lives  alone  with  one 
little  girl  of  five,  and  a  boy  of  thirteen.  She  is 
seriously  wounded  and  perhaps  in  agony. 
Her  husband  was  deported  as  a  civilian  host- 
age into  Germany.  Her  oldest  son,  married 
and  father  of  a  family,  has  been  at  the  front 
since  the  beginning;  her  second  son  is  a  pris- 
oner in  Germany  and  the  third  is  at  the  point 
of  death,  terribly  burned  by  the  explosion  of  a 
shell  lying  in  the  line  of  march.  Mme.  X— 
is  without  a  single  resource,  the  Germans 
having  taken  everything  away;  work  tools, 
garden  tools,  mattresses,  linen,  and  every 
object  of  value. 

"During  the  German  occupation,  Mme. 
X —  having  some  medical  knowledge,  suc- 
ceeded, by  a  combination  of  tact  and  devo- 
tion, in  nursing  and  in  assisting  all  the  wounded 
prisoners  cared  for  in  the  district.  She  saved 
at  the  risk  of  her  life  and  that  of  her  infants, 
the  big  bronze  bell  of  the  church  presented 
by  the  Emperor  Napoleon.^ 

"Thinking   that   this   woman,   more   than 


Cooperation  in  Practice         85 

being  necessitous,  was  above  all  a  heroine,  1 
have  believed  it  well,  and  have  allowed  my- 
self, to  call  her  to  your  kind  attention." 

A  second  letter  comes  from  a  lieutenant  in 
the  French  Army,  presenting  the  case  of 
another  family  entirely  unknown  to  him. 
But  in  his  company  is  a  soldier,  who  has  been 
taken  in  and  given  shelter  during  his  repos 
by  a  grandmother  and  her  granddaughter 
somewhere  in  the  Oise.  They  have  treated 
him  like  one  of  the  family.  Now,  as  he  is 
about  to  leave  for  the  front,  the  grandmother 
has  been  taken  ill;  the  granddaughter  is  young 
and  not  strong.  He  has  already  written  to  a 
married  daughter  at  a  distance.  The  daughter, 
whose  husband  is  ill  in  bed,  writes  in  turn  to 
her  brother,  thinking  that  some  arrangement 
can  be  made  for  her  to  go  to  their  mother. 
But  in  vain.  So,  all  these  letters,  carefully 
annotated,  the  lieutenant  encloses  with  his 
own,  asking  the  American  Red  Cross  to  help. 

Not  only  was  it  the  destitute  peasants,  but 
the  unfortunates  of  another  class  that  the 


86  Helping  France 

American  Red  Cross  was  privileged  to  assist. 
I  refer  especially  to  the  heroic  chatelaines  of 
ruined  chateaux.  A  book  might  be  written 
on  them  in  the  relief  work  of  France.  Like 
the  president  of  the  Villages  Libe're's,  from 
whom  I  have  before  quoted,  many  considered 
themselves  by  their  very  misfortunes  elected 
to  assist  their  more  needy  neighbors.  In 
France,  there  are  class  distinctions,  handed 
down  from  feudalism,  which  we  in  America 
do  not  know.  The  Parisian  lady,  of  ever  so 
charitable  intentions,  is  as  much  at  sea  as  an 
American  in  dealing  with  the  Picard  peasants. 
"Superstitious,  stingy,  independent,  reserved, 
yet  when  they  have  once  given  their  confi- 
dence, absolutely  loyal,  and  brave  beyond 
anything  I  have  even  imagined," — this  is  the 
characterization  of  them  given  by  an  American 
worker  among  these  peasants  of  France.  Two 
ladies  in  the  Oise  rendered  invaluable  service 
by  staying  on  their  ruined  estates  and  inter- 
preting the  needs  of  their  dependents.  One 
is  Mme.  Menget  of  the  Babceuf  Committee, 


A  Street  in  Guiscard. 


T&e  Chdteau,  Ham. 

Apris  le  Recul  Allemand,  Mars  1917.     Noyon,  Guiscard,  Ham:   Armand 
Gu&ritte.     Vernant  *  Dolle,  Imprimeurs,  Paris. 


Cooperation  in  Practice         87 

and  the  other  the  Comtesse  d'Evry  of  Namp- 
cel.  The  story  of  the  latter  epitomizes  the 
sort  of  help  that  the  Red  Cross  has  given  in 
the  Oise. 

The  Comtesse  d'Evry  had,  before  the  war, 
a  chateau  on  a  cliff  overlooking  the  hamlet 
of  Nampcel  which  clustered  about  its  little 
church  in  a  narrow  gorge.  Four  farms  in 
the  commune  belonged  to  her.  She  had  be- 
sides, two  other  estates,  one  further  south  in 
the  Oise,  and  another  in  Normandy.  The 
counts  of  Evry  have  long  been  established  at 
Nampcel.  Besides  the  rich  farmlands,  there 
had  been  extensive  quarries  there.  The  houses, 
like  most  in  this  region,  were  solidly  built  of 
stone.  The  first  flying  wedge  of  the  Germans 
overwhelmed  and  destroyed  the  hamlet.  The 
inhabitants  fled,  the  Comtesse  herself  among 
them,  with  her  little  boy.  The  caretakers  of 
the  chateau,  however,  refused  to  leave.  But 
their  devotion  was  futile;  the  chateau  was 
looted,  soaked  in  kerosene  and  burned. 

The  spring  of  1917,  however,  found  the  Com- 


88  Helping  France 

tesse  back  in  her  ruined  village.  Like  her 
neighbors,  she  was  homeless,  but  undaunted. 
She  fitted  up  a  caravan  and  set  it,  not  on  the 
isolated  height,  but  down  in  the  valley,  among 
her  villagers.  As  they  returned,  she  cared  for 
them  and  gave  them  employment  on  her 
farms.  Her  days  were  full,  her  villagers 
happy  until  in  March,  1918,  came  the  second 
catastrophe.  The  Germans  returned,  but  the 
Comtesse  was  prepared.  She  had  farm  wagons 
and  horses.  These  she  divided  among  her 
people.  On  each  she  placed  a  store  of  pro- 
visions to  last  several  days, — and  that  store 
of  provisions  came  from  the  American  Red 
Cross.  Last  of  all  she  loaded  the  cart  which 
was  to  take  her  boy,  a  lad  of  twelve.  She 
put  him  in  charge  of  her  overseer  and  his  wife, 
and  started  the  whole  slow  procession  off  to 
her  estate  in  Normandy.  It  lends  a  bright 
color  to  the  picture  of  universal  desolation  to 
know  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  children 
regarded  the  exodus  as  a  glorious  adventure. 
Such  are  the  contrasts  of  war. 


Cooperation  In  Practice         89 

Mme.  d'Evry  herself  did  not  go  to  Nor- 
mandy. In  the  midst  of  her  second  flight 
from  Nampcel,  she  was  already  laying  plans 
for  her  return.  She  had  it  in  mind  to  plant 
potatoes  on  the  lawn  of  her  estate  to  the  south, 
so  as  to  have  them  ready  for  winter  use.  To 
this  estate,  therefore,  she  retired,  and  there 
she  was  able  to  give  a  temporary  shelter  to 
the  personnel  of  the  American  Red  Cross, 
when  they  were  at  last  driven  south  from  Com- 
piegne.  Strawberries,  sugar  and  cream  I 
have  heard  awaited  them, — an  unbelievable 
contrast  to  days  of  evacuating  and  feeding 
refugees,  and  nights  of  continuous  bombing. 

The  Comtesse  d'Evry's  potato  crop  was 
planted,  and  dug,  and  stored  away.  But 
none  too  soon.  By  the  autumn  of  1918,  she 
again  went  back  to  Nampcel.  The  heights 
about  that  village  have  been  swept  as  by  a 
cyclone.  One  locates  neighboring  villages 
by  gaunt  sign  posts  alone.  Not  a  tree  is 
standing.  The  road  runs  naked  along  the 
level  clay  ridges,  except  where  a  stretch  of 


9O  Helping  France 

battered  camouflage  flaps  in  the  wind.  In  the 
valley  beneath  are  jagged  walls  and  German 
dugouts,  and  not  a  living  soul.  But  the 
Comtesse  can  be  found,  housed  in  a  quarry 
which  served  later  as  a  stable  for  one  of  her 
great  farms.  She  is  planning  another  exodus 
for  her  villagers,  this  time  from  Normandy  to 
Nampcel.  And  the  American  Red  Cross, 
itself  back  in  Compiegne,  is  helping  to  make 
this  possible. 


Onvttler*  Church  (Santerre) 


Reflexions  et  Croguis  sur  I' Architecture  au  Payt  de  France:   George*  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

CHAPTER  Vin 

DIRECT   INTERVENTION 

THE  problems  of  the  Somme  were  more 
complex  than  those  of  the  Oise.  In  the 
first  place,  its  liberated  territory  was  divided 
between  two  armies  of  occupation;  the  west- 
ern lines  being  held  by  the  British,  and  the 
eastern  lines  by  the  French.  It  was  naturally 
divided  also  into  two  broad  economic  sections, 
corresponding  roughly  to  the  two  areas  occu- 
pied by  them;  the  manufacturing  cities  and 

91 


92  Helping  France 

dependencies  of  the  north,  and  the  plain  of  the 
Santerre,  par  excellence,  the  granary  of  France. 
In  the  autumn  of  1917,  the  latter  had  been 
devastated,  the  former  had  not.  Two  dele- 
gates were  therefore  assigned  to  the  Somme, 
one  located  in  Amiens,  the  capital  of  the  de- 
partment, and  the  other  at  Ham,  the  one 
having  charge  of  the  undevastated,  and  the 
other  of  the  devastated  area.  In  both  places 
were  worked  out  some  of  the  variations  to  the 
Belgian  scheme  of  relief  which  had  been  so 
closely  adhered  to  in  the  Oise. 

These  hinged  on  the  direct  employment  of 
American  Red  Cross  personnel.  In  the  ter- 
ritory controlled  from  Ham  four  experiments 
of  this  type  were  started:  (1)  Actual  repair 
work  by  a  Red  Cross  reconstruction  unit  in 
five  villages  near  Nesle,  (2)  Reconstruction 
and  rehabilitation  by  Friends'  Units  at  Gruny 
and  Ham,  to  which  in  point  of  accessibility 
rather  than  to  the  Oise,  belonged  also  the 
agricultural  group  at  Golancourt,  (3)  Rehabil- 
itation by  a  woman's  college  unit,  that  of 


Direct  Intervention  93 

Smith  College,  in  the  villages  centering  about 
Gre"court,  and  (4)  A  civilian  hospital  in  charge 
of  an  American  Red  Cross  doctor  at  Nesle. 
In  the  Somme,  then,  came  into  play  the  three 
main  bureaus  of  the  Department  of  Civilian 
Affairs,  those  concerned  with  reconstruction, 
with  rehabilitation  and  with  public  health. 

Yet  these  experiments  were  considered  at 
the  time  not  so  much  a  departure  as  a  logical 
result  of  cooperation.  It  was  after  important 
conferences  with  the  French  Government  and 
in  the  place  selected  by  it  that  a  modest  be- 
ginning in  reconstruction  was  made.  It  was 
in  accordance  with  a  far-reaching  agreement 
with  the  Friends  that  they  entered  the  field 
under  Red  Cross  auspices;  it  was  in  an  effort 
to  use  the  enthusiasm  of  the  women's  colleges 
of  America  that  the  policy  of  college  units 
was  approved,  and  it  was  at  the  actual  request 
of  the  French  Government  and  the  agent  of 
the  French  Red  Cross  there  that  the  civilian 
hospital  was  established  at  Nesle.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  hospital  cannot  be  con- 


94  Helping  France 

sidered  a  new  departure,  doctors,  nurses  and 
medicines  having  been  from  the  first  one  of 
the  most  important  contributions  of  America 
to  France.  The  hospital  at  Nesle  was,  how- 
ever, the  first  civilian  hospital  opened  by  the 
American  Red  Cross  in  the  devastated  area. 

The  revival  of  agriculture,  primarily,  was 
made  the  basis  of  French  government  relief. 
It  was  in  order  to  produce  food  that  the  cul- 
tivator was  allowed  to  remain  on,  or  assisted 
by  the  Government  to  return  to,  his  farm. 
The  angle  of  America  on  this  problem  is  well 
put  in  a  Red  Cross  report  already  quoted 
from:  "Idle  land  in  France  means  an  extra 
burden  on  tonnage  from  America.  Idle  land 
in  France  means  more  soldiers,  more  food- 
stuffs, more  ammunition  from  the  United 
States  of  America.  ...  At  least  one  man  in 
our  organization  has  asked:  'How  many 
ounces  of  bread  is  a  brick  worth?"  There 
came  a  new  slogan  into  Red  Cross  activity: 
"Housing  follows  the  plow." 

In  that  part  of  Picardy  now  designated  as 


Direct  Intervention  95 

the  Somme,  large  farms,  even  in  the  American 
sense  of  the  word,  were  the  rule.  For  in- 
stance, in  Croix-Molineaux,  one  of  the  vil- 
lages selected  for  repair,  there  were  farms 
varying  from  500  acres,  300  acres,  200  acres, 
down  to  twelve  acres.  As  a  rule,  the  farm 
buildings  hereabouts  cluster  in  villages,  owing 
to  two  causes,  first,  protection — an  idea  dating 
from  feudal  times — and  secondly,  the  high 
value  of  land.  The  structure  of  each  manage 
reflects  these  two  principles;  economy  of 
space,  and  security.  Despite  its  one  story  of 
height,  necessitated  by  the  soft  brick,  or  clay 
wattling  of  which  it  is  made,  it  is  compactly 
built  around  a  central  court,  this  court  con- 
taining the  most  coveted  possession  of  the 
farmer,  his  piles  of  manure.  Opening  di- 
rectly from  the  street,  and  usually  through  the 
barn,  is  the  arched  gateway,  wide  enough  and 
high  enough  to  receive  the  harvest  wains. 
Not  only  is  the  barn  the  first,  it  is  the  largest 
building  of  the  enclosure  and  serves  as  both 
grange  and  threshing  floor.  On  either  whig 


96  Helping  France 

of  it  are  built  the  stables,  the  rabbit  hutches, 
the  hen  houses — all  of  brick — without  which  a 
farm  in  Picardy  would  not  be  a  farm.  Oppo- 
site the  great  gate,  and  forming  the  back  wall 
of  the  rectangle,  is  the  farmer's  house.  From 
this  coign  of  vantage,  he  surveys  and  guards 
his  domain.  "When  the  wheat  has  entered, 
when  the  gate  is  closed,  the  house  is  entirely 
shut,  and  the  street  appears  blind.  In  each 
direction  extends  a  long  line  of  blank,  monot- 
onous walls,  giving  to  the  village  an  aspect 
silent  and  dead.  One  can  see  that  every- 
thing is  designed  for  the  convenience  of  farm 
labor.  Nothing  is  sacrificed  to  the  comfort  of 
the  owner,  for  whom  his  house,  as  well  as  his 
field,  is  an  implement  of  toil.  It  exemplifies  a 
form  of  life  very  ancient,  since  in  the  enact- 
ments of  the  thirteenth  century  one  finds  the 
Picard  farm  described  as  it  stands  to-day.  It 
is  a  manner  of  life  adapted  for  all  time  to 
these  fertile  lands  which  for  twenty  centuries 
the  plow  has  turned  without  hindrance,  and 
where  France,  in  the  critical  hours  of  her  his- 


Direct  Intervention  97 

tory,  has  been  able  to  count  on  the  greatest  of 
her  strength."* 

In  villages  such  as  this,  at  Croix-Molineaux, 
Matigny  and  "Y"  the  American  Red  Cross 
began  temporary  repairs,  first  of  the  houses, 
then  of  the  barns,  and  finally,  of  the  schools. 
Their  lumber  they  drew  from  two  sources,  the 
French  Government  through  what  was  famil- 
iarly called  the  Moroccan  Camp  at  Nesle,  and 
the  Red  Cross  itself  through  its  warehouse  at 
Ham.  Their  gang  of  workmen  they  recruited 
themselves  among  civilians,  subject,  of  course, 
to  the  limitations  imposed  by  military  service. 
On  the  advice  of  the  French  architect  who 
made  the  survey  and  later  became  an  asso- 
ciate head  of  the  bureau,  and  in  accordance 
with  the  policy  of  the  French  Government, 
these  repairs  were  made  against  a  future  in- 
demnity of  war.  That  is,  each  farmer  whose 
roof  was  patched,  or  whose  windows  were 
set  in,  in  case  these  repairs  were  of  a  per- 
manent nature,  understood  that  he  would 

*Paul  Leon:  La  Renaissance  des  Ruinea. 


98  Helping  France 

eventually  pay  for  them  from  the  sum  allowed 
him  by  the  government  to  cover  his  loss. 
Naturally,  work  was  hampered  by  many  ob- 
stacles; the  difficulty  of  obtaining  efficient 
labor,  and  the  limited  supply  of  material,  par- 
ticularly lumber.  The  needs  of  the  army 
came  first,  always;  and  the  needs  of  individ- 
uals and  of  private  contractors  had  equal 
claims  with  the  Red  Cross  on  the  lumber 
turned  out  by  the  government  at  the  Moroc- 
can camp.  The  taking  over  of  the  French 
lines  in  the  Somme  by  the  British  in  January, 
1918,  caused  other  difficulties,  owing  to  dif- 
ferent regulations  in  regard  to  civilian  opera- 
tions behind  the  lines.  Nevertheless,  prog- 
ress was  made,  and  by  the  end  of  Jan- 
uary, 1918,  forty  farms  had  been  repaired, 
twenty-seven  of  them  completely,  according 
to  the  specifications.  At  this  time,  a  force 
of  thirty  men  was  being  employed.  By 
March,  two  more  villages  in  the  neighborhood 
were  in  process  of  renovation,  and  one  hun- 
dred houses  in  all  had  been  repaired. 


Direct  Intervention  99 

Near  neighbors  to  this  group  of  villages  were 
those  of  the  Friends,  whom  it  will  not  be  out 
of  place  to  consider  here  as  an  integral  part 
of  the  American  Red  Cross.  At  Gruny,  near 
Roye,  was  located  a  company  of  fifteen  work- 
ers, who  undertook  repairs  of  houses  for  four 
villages  assigned  them  by  the  French  Gov- 
ernment. They  were  allowed  to  take  ma- 
terials from  uninhabited  ruins  for  rebuilding, 
and  did  a  very  substantial  piece  of  work. 
Working  with  them  was  an  agricultural  unit 
which  plowed,  seeded  and  restocked  the 
farms.  At  Ham,  another  construction  unit 
of  six  worked  up  toward  the  St.  Quentin  front, 
in  the  Aisne,  erecting  demountable  houses 
for  the  Government.  These  houses  were 
made  at  their  own  factory  in  the  Jura  moun- 
tains. Four  such  houses,  of  two  or  three 
rooms,  were  constructed  there  each  week,  from 
lumber  requisitioned  for  them  by  the  Gov- 
ernment, and  the  finished  product  became  the 
property  of  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior.  This 
unit  at  Ham,  largely  augmented,  went  out 


ioo  Helping  France 

later  to  put  up  barracks  for  the  nearby  vil- 
lages in  the  Somme.  While  engaged  in  this 
work,  the  Friends  lived  with  the  families 
among  the  ruins,  and  by  their  presence  did 
far  more  service  than  can  be  measured  by  the 
buildings  they  put  up.  In  all,  they  mounted 
eighty  barracks. 

As  the  construction  unit  left  Ham,  another 
charged  with  relief  work  took  over  its  quarters, 
working  from  Ham  in  an  assigned  area  com- 
prising twelve  villages,  and  in  the  town  itself. 

The  agricultural  group  at  Golancourt  has 
already  been  mentioned.  Like  all  private 
agencies  who  attempted  this  line  of  work, 
their  aim  was  to  assist  the  small  holder,  the 
needs  of  the  grands  cultivateurs  being  met  by 
the  Government  scheme  of  tractor  plows, 
manned  by  soldiers.  Four  hundred  tractors 
were  already  at  work  behind  the  lines,  when 
the  Friends  made  their  first  survey  of  the 
Somme.  By  spring,  with  the  aid  of  the 
British  Army,  whose  agricultural  programme 
was  as  fully  developed  as  the  French,  28,000 


Direct  Intervention  101 

acres  had  been  thus  plowed  in  the  depart- 
ment. But,  naturally,  wholesale  plowing 
could  not  be  done  in  kitchen  gardens,  or  fields 
of  small  acreage.  To  meet  the  needs  of  these 
petty  farmers,  whose  aggregate  holdings  were 
quite  as  important  as  those  of  the  landed 
estates,  the  Friends  had  horses,  plows  and 
personnel.  They  were  stocking  their  farms 
also  with  chickens  and  rabbits,  to  breed 
them  for  the  countryside. 

The  work  of  the  Friends'  agricultural  and 
constructive  centers  dovetailed  with  that  of 
the  Smith  College  Relief  Unit,  for  they  came 
into  the  villages  of  Hombleux  and  Esmery- 
Hallon,  assigned  to  the  latter,  to  put  up  bar- 
racks. This  Smith  College  Unit  was  pri- 
marily a  rehabilitation  unit,  the  first  to  be 
sent  out  by  a  woman's  college  to  France.  It 
received  its  assignment  of  villages  through  the 
American  Fund  for  French  Wounded,  and 
worked  as  a  part  of  the  French  Service  de 
Sante  until  transferred  to  the  American  Red 
Cross  in  February,  1918. 


102  Helping  France 

Its  personnel  of  sixteen  members  covered 
sixteen  villages,  or  a  territory  of  thirty-six 
square  miles.  Its  method,  in  general,  was  to 
give  outright  the  larger  necessities,  such  as 
furniture,  bedding  and  stoves,  but  to  sell  at  a 
low  cost  smaller  articles,  such  as  clothing, 
kitchen  utensils,  and  soap.  Live  stock  also 
was  sold,  for  the  reason  that  what  was  paid  for 
was  appreciated  and  cared  for  by  its  owner. 
Milk,  too,  was  sold  from  a  herd  of  cows,  at 
six  cents  a  quart.  And  all  of  these  articles 
were  taken  by  the  Unit  in  their  cars  through 
the  villages,  so  that  their  advent,  on  stated 
days,  came  to  be  looked  forward  to.  They 
furnished  a  neighborhood  center  of  traffic  and 
gossip  analogous'  to  the  village  fair.  Like  all 
the  relief  agencies  they  gave  out  sewing. 

But  the  two  lines  of  effort  which  won  the 
warmest  praise  from  the  French  authorities 
for  the  Unit,  were  their  dispensaries  and  their 
activities  for  children.  Two  doctors  and 
three  nurses'  aids  made  the  rounds  of  the  vil- 
lages weekly,  not  only  holdirg  dispensaries, 


Direct  Intervention  103 

but  visiting  the  patients  in  their  homes.  Con- 
ditions needing  the  attention  of  the  visitors 
charged  with  relief,  or  of  those  occupied  with 
children,  were  then  noted  and  acted  on. 
Most  of  the  patients  being  children,  the  chil- 
dren's visitors  were  the  doctor's  strong  allies. 

Yet  they  were  careful  to  identify  them- 
selves unmistakably  with  their  special  func- 
tion, which  was  to  bring  happiness  to  the  six 
hundred  children  in  their  charge.  These 
children  had  survived  strange  and  terrible 
things;  bombardments,  deportations,  whole- 
sale destruction,  the  billetings  of  hostile 
troops,  with  all  the  incident  restrictions  upon 
them,  the  no  less  alien  appearance  of  the  Brit- 
ish troops  who  found  them  in  their  still 
smoking  ruins,  and  told  them  that  they  were 
free.  They  had,  most  of  them,  neither  fathers 
nor  elder  brothers,  since  these  were  either  at 
the  front  or  hostages  of  war.  Without  schools, 
without  churches,  they  had  run  wild  for  three 
and  a  half  years. 

Such   children   needed   diversion,   and   for 


104  Helping  France 

them  play  centers  were  established  in  every 
village.  Schools,  behind  the  front,  were  bound 
to  function  irregularly,  however  devoted  the 
teachers.  Those  unable  to  attend  school 
were  taught;  sewing  classes  were  held  for  the 
girls  and  carpentry  classes  for  the  boys.  A 
traveling  library  of  a  thousand  volumes  re- 
joiced the  hearts  of  both  young  and  old.  For 
it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  French 
peasantry,  however  close  they  live  to  the  soil — 
possibly  because  of  it — are  among  the  keenest 
minds  in  the  world.  In  this  respect  they  are 
analogous  to  our  own  old  rural  stock  which 
gave  us  Daniel  Webster,  Abraham  Lincoln, 
and  our  host  of  country  boys  who  have  be- 
come our  self-made  men. 

The  emphasis  placed  on  work  for  children 
may  be  judged  by  the  request  for  the  estab- 
lishing of  a  Red  Cross  hospital  at  Nesle.  It 
was  on  behalf  of  the  twelve  hundred  children 
in  Nesle  and  the  surrounding  villages  that 
this  request  was  made.  The  medical  situa- 
tion was  typical  of  that  throughout  the  devas- 


Direct  Intervention  105 

tated  area.  There  was  an  old  hospital,  under 
the  care  of  Sisters  of  Charity,  which  had  been 
used  by  the  Germans  and  stripped  of  every- 
thing before  their  retreat.  There  was  one 
civilian  doctor  who  had  literally  no  instru- 
ments, no  drugs,  and  no  means  of  convey- 
ance. There  was  a  military  surgeon,  who,  in 
addition  to  his  army  duties,  cared  for  twenty- 
five  villages.  There  was  a  midwife,  whose 
services  at  this  time  were  little  needed,  so 
long  had  families  been  separated. 

A  former  tuberculosis  pavilion,  sunny  and 
pleasantly  set  in  a  quaint  garden,  was  allotted 
to  the  American  Red  Cross.  The  staff, 
consisting  of  the  doctor,  a  trained  nurse,  and 
two  nurses'  aids,  arrived  at  nightfall,  cold  and 
wet.  No  fire  awaited  them,  but  there  was 
promise  of  future  warmth  in  a  white  tiled 
Dutch  stove  which  their  predecessor,  the  Herr 
Doktor  of  some  German  staff,  had  had  built  in 
for  his  comfort.  It  was  out  of  repair,  as  was 
the  plumbing,  and  the  whole  place  was  in  need 
of  more  than  a  spring  house  cleaning.  But 


io6  Helping  France 

it  was  rapidly  put  in  order,  and  two  wards  of 
twelve  beds,  white  and  spotless,  made  ready 
for  the  little  patients.  The  Pavilion  Joffre, 
as  it  was  named,  was  the  only  civilian  hos- 
pital within  a  radius  of  twenty-five  miles.  A 
travel  ng  dispensary  was  part  of  the  equip- 
ment of  the  hospital,  and  visited  seven  out- 
lying villages.  At  the  suggestion  of  the 
Mayor  of  Voyennes,  one  of  the  towns  served, 
it  carried  a  shower  bath.  Fresh  milk,  sup- 
plied by  the  authorities,  and  canned  milk,  by 
the  American  Red  Cross,  was  distributed  to 
infants  and  supplementary  feeding  given  to 
undernourished  children. 

In  brief,  the  service  of  the  little  hospital  at 
Nesle  was  a  home  service.  Its  staff  physi- 
cians add  their  quota  of  testimony  to  the 
character  of  the  people  they  were  privileged 
to  help.  Though  large  families  in  this  section 
are  the  rule  and  though  the  able-bodied  and 
the  bread  winners  were  absent,  there  was  no 
thought  of  putting  the  waifs  and  strays  of 
war  into  institutions.  Individual  families  in 


Direct  Intervention  107 

the  communes  took  the  orphans  into  their 
already  crowded  hovels,  fed  and  clothed  and 
cared  for  them.  The  war,  which  had  leveled 
their  homes,  had  leveled  them  in  a  common 
misfortune.  And  as  one  wonders  how  the  old 
farm  buildings,  those  massive,  isolated  en- 
tities of  the  thirteenth  century  can  be  rebuilt, 
one  wonders  also  if  the  patriarchal  form  of 
life  they  typify  can  ever  be  revived.  Has 
not  a  new  consciousness  of  solidarity,  of  neigh- 
borliness  been  born,  which  will  outlast  the 
war?  In  this  consciousness,  the  American 
Red  Cross,  coming  from  so  great  a  distance, 
so  unknown  a  country,  on  an  errand  of  mercy 
which  expresses  the  solidarity  of  the  whole 
world,  has  its  share. 


iH^^ 


Loon  Cathedral 

Reflexions  et  Croquis  sur  I'  Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:  George*  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Parit. 


CHAPTER  IX 


."POLISHING  THE  TARNISHED  MIRRORS" 


IN  the  midst  of  its  separate  activities,  the 
American  Red  Cross  as  a  distributing  cen- 
ter must  not  be  overlooked.  There  were 
two  warehouses,  one  at  Ham,  and  the  other  at 
Nesle,  supplying  the  region  from  Pe*ronne  to 
Golancourt.  These  had  a  transportation  ser- 

108 


"Polishing  Tarnished  Mirrors"    109 

vice  of  five  trucks.  The  activity  of  this 
branch  may  be  judged  by  the  testimony  of  a 
representative  of  the  French  Red  Cross  that 
it  furnished  sixty  per  cent  of  all  the  aid  given 
in  this  sector.  Yet  there  were  strong  and 
efficient  agencies  in  the  field ;  that  of  the  Gov- 
ernment itself  not  being  the  least.  M.  Quel- 
lien,  the  special  sous-pre*fet  at  Nesle  charged 
with  the  problems  of  reconstruction,  was  in- 
tensely interested  in  the  needs  of  his  depart- 
ment. He  made  the  federation  of  the  soci- 
eties working  with  him  to  this  end  a  real 
thing,  calling  them  into  conference  together 
each  month,  sharing  with  them  what  sup- 
plies he  had  at  his  disposal,  and  requiring  of 
them  in  turn  monthly  reports.  He  went 
about  in  person,  not  only  to  inspect,  but  to 
learn  how  he  might  be  of  service  to  them. 
His  zeal  on  behalf  of  the  civilians  was,  if  any- 
thing, surpassed  by  that  of  the  commandant 
of  the  Third  Army  in  charge  of  this  sector, 
stationed  at  Ham.  He  again  was  rivaled  by 
his  colleague,  the  commandant  at  Guiscard, 


no  Helping  France 

whose  interest  ranged  from  large  contribu- 
tions from  his  private  purse,  and  rebuilding 
of  villages  by  details  of  soldiers,  to  hunting  up 
a  donkey — a  very  small  and  gentle  donkey— 
to  carry  relief  supplies.  The  Department  of 
Agriculture,  already  mentioned,  was  also 
strong  in  the  Somme.  Its  tractors  were 
busy  plowing  almost  on  the  heels  of  the 
German  retreat.  The  military  chefs  de  ser- 
vice had  their  offices  in  every  considerable 
group  of  villages;  the  repairing  of  farm  im- 
plements, and  the  selling  of  army  horses  no 
longer  fit  for  campaigning,  but  still  useful  in 
the  furtherance  of  their  plan,  were  syste- 
matically carried  on. 

Among  private  agencies,  the  French  Red 
Cross,  represented  by  the  Union  des  Femmes 
de  France,  was  most  fortunate  in  its  dele- 
gates at  Nesle,  M.  and  Mme.  Amede*e  Vernes. 
M.  Vernes,  a  manufacturer  of  large  interests 
and  a  member  of  one  of  those  Protestant 
families  of  culture  which  have  kept  their 
faith  since  the  days  of  the  Huguenots,  took 


A  Street  in  Ham. 


The  Mill  on  the  Somme,  Ham. 

Apris  le  Recul  Allemand,  Mars  1917.     Noyon,  Guiscard,  Ham:   Armand 
Gu&ritte.     Vernant  &  Dolle,  Imprimeurs,  Paris. 


"Polishing  Tarnished  Mirrors"    ill 

his  wife  and  went  to  live  in  Nesle.  The  fact 
that  they  had  themselves  lost  much,  and  had 
given  their  two  sons  to  the  cause,  made  them 
peculiarly  sympathetic  with  the  people  whom 
they  were  trying  to  assist.  It  was  M.  Vernes 
who  was  designated  by  the  Ministry  of  the 
Interior  to  be  the  head  of  the  departmental 
federation  of  private  organizations  under  M. 
Quellien.  At  Ham,  Mme.  Roussel  headed 
another  committee  for  the  Union.  She,  too, 
is  a  remarkable  character — for  she,  like  M. 
and  Mme.  Vernes,  is  again  back  at  her  post. 
Though  eighty  years  of  age,  she  nursed  the 
French  wounded  in  Ham  throughout  the 
German  occupation.  German  officers,  nat- 
urally, were  quartered  upon  her;  gentle- 
manly appearing  men,  very  punctilious  in 
handing  her  in  to  dinner  every  night.  But 
on  the  day  of  their  departure,  they  packed 
up  her  ancestral  clock  before  her  eyes,  and 
loaded  it  onto  a  van,  and  took  it  to  Germany. 
Mme.  Vernes  and  Mme.  Roussel,  besides 
distributing  relief  supplies  running  up  into 


H2  Helping  France 

between  twenty  and  thirty  thousand  articles, 
organized  two  flourishing  sewing  circles.  In 
Nesle,  one  hundred  and  sixty  women  were 
employed.  The  material  and  the  sewing 
machines  and  a  considerable  amount  of  money 
were  in  each  case  furnished  by  the  American 
Red  Cross.  In  fact  the  Union  des  Femmes 
de  France  speaks  itself  in  its  Bulletin  de 
Guerre  of  the  aid  accorded  it  throughout  by 
us.  "The  American  Red  Cross,"  it  reads, 
"places  generously  at  the  disposal  of  the  del- 
egate and  the  nurses  of  the  Union  des  Femmes 
de  France,  articles  of  every  kind  and  lends 
them  the  precious  assistance  of  its  automo- 
biles in  visiting  the  villages  and  assuring  their 
supply  of  food." 

Located  at  Nesle  was  also  another  efficient 
relief  agency,  the  French  Wounded  Emergency 
Fund.  This  was  a  British  unit,  of  eight  to 
ten  workers,  having  nineteen  villages  west  of 
Nesle  in  their  charge.  But  as  they  had  their 
own  warehouse  and  their  transport  service, 
they  were  little  indebted  to  us.  On  the  taking 


"Polishing  Tarnished  Mirrors"    113 

over  of  the  French  lines  by  the  British,  how- 
ever, in  January,  1918,  they  were  compelled 
by  the  regulations  of  the  British  Army  to 
retire,  these  regulations  not  allowing  British 
civilian  workers  so  near  the  front.  Their  vil- 
lages were  then  taken  over  by  the  Union  des 
Femmes  de  France. 

An  interesting  experiment  at  Rosieres,  half 
way  between  Nesle  and  Amiens,  started  oddly 
enough  under  the  auspices  of  the  British  Army 
just  as  that  same  army  closed  down  the  work 
of  its  countrywomen  at  Nesle.  But  the  work 
at  Rosieres  was  undertaken  by  a  Franco- 
American  agency,  the  Fund  for  War  Devas- 
tated Villages,  which  did  not  come  under  the 
rules  laid  down  by  the  British  Army  for  organi- 
zations of  its  own  nationality.  To  Rosieres 
and  six  neighboring  villages  comprising  five 
hundred  persons,  one  American  worker  was 
assigned.  There  is  an  advantage  in  not  hav- 
ing a  large  staff  which  this  worker  fully 
realized;  she  got  her  cooperation  from  her 
villagers  themselves.  Among  them  she  was 


114  Helping  France 

fortunate  in  finding  such  mayors  and  country 
gentlemen  as  have  been  written  about  in  all 
French  accounts  of  the  invaded  territory, 
men — and  women  too — who  by  their  bravery 
have  upheld  the  best  traditions  of  Picardy. 
At  Beaufort,  for  example,  lived  in  his  Chateau 
the  old  Count  de  Lupel.  In  1914,  when  the 
Germans  first  took  the  village,  they  requisi- 
tioned certain  of  the  count's  employees,  to 
serve  as  hostlers,  since  the  count  was  well 
known  to  them  as  a  famous  breeder  of  horses. 
But  the  count  had  hidden  his  men,  nor  would 
he  deliver  them  over,  although  he  was  threat- 
ened and  actually  led  out  to  be  shot.  In  1918, 
on  the  return  of  the  Germans,  equally  solicit- 
ous for  his  dependents,  he  gave  up  his  last 
horse  and  wagon  to  them  and  escaped  himself 
on  foot.  The  mayor  of  the  commune  was  a 
man  no  less  devoted,  and  possessed  in  addi- 
tion, that  marvel  of  energy  in  French  village 
politics,  a  wife.  The  mayor's  wife  was  a 
devout  Catholic,  and  as  such  opposed  to  the 
public  school,  which  in  France,  as  in  America, 


"Polishing  Tarnished  Mirrors"    115 

allows  no  religious  instruction.  She,  there- 
fore, opened  a  Catholic  school,  and  saw  to  it 
that  all  the  girls,  at  least,  attended.  She  was 
interested  in  all  matters  of  public  welfare, 
and  it  was  she  who  ordered  and  generaled 
the  retreat  of  the  villagers  hi  the  spring  of 
1918. 

But  hi  the  three  months  from  January  to 
March,  before  that  catastrophe,  much  had 
been  accomplished  in  rehabilitation.  The 
pressing  needs  of  the  villages  had  been  met; 
seeds  were  ready  for  distribution;  children's 
work  was  starting;  a  quantity  of  wool  was 
in  store  for  the  knitting  which  was  to  become 
a  village  industry.  In  this  general  distribu- 
tion, the  American  Red  Cross  gave  its  share. 

About  a  month  later  tha  the  experiment 
at  Rosieres  there  was  opened  at  Pe*ronne,  a 
dispensary,  hospital,  and  relief  station  under 
the  joint  management  of  the  Village  Recon- 
stitue*  and  the  Secours  aux  Blesses  Militaires 
of  the  French  Red  Cross.  Before  the  Ger- 
man drive,  169  families,  in  nine  villages, 


Ii6  Helping  France 

had  been  reached  by  the  devoted  nurses  in 
charge. 

Roye,  southwest  of  Nesle,  had  two  relief 
agencies,  that  of  Mrs.  Duryea  of  New  York, 
and  that  of  the  Secours  d'Urgence.  The 
former  operated  in  many  villages,  giving  out 
emergency  relief.  The  latter  established  here 
a  poste  de  secours  which  was  a  model  of  its 
kind.  The  Secours  d'Urgence  makes  the 
proud  claim  of  being  the  first  French  society 
to  undertake  civilian  relief  in  the  devastated 
area,  and  Roye,  situated  for  three  years  in 
the  No-Man's  Land  of  continuous  bombard- 
ment, was  its  first  post.  Like  most  of  the 
larger  French  societies,  it  had  been  occupied 
up  to  the  spring  of  1917  with  the  needs  of  the 

soldiers  under  the  well-known  name  of  the 

/ 

"Bureau  Central  des  Ecloppe"s." 

With  the  liberation  of  the  Somme,  an  appeal 
came  to  the  Bureau  on  behalf  of  the  civilian 
population,  not  from  civilians,  but  from  an 
officer  in  the  army.  Mile.  Javel  went  up  at 
his  request  and  saw  the  desert  about  Roye. 


"Polishing  Tarnished  Mirrors"    117 

Yet  what  could  the  Bureau  do,  with  its  re- 
sources already  strained  to  the  utmost?  The 
founders  collected  ten  thousand  francs  among 
their  friends  as  a  beginning.  They  had,  first, 
their  typical  shelter,  and  their  nurses.  With 
the  cooperation  of  the  army,  they  made  re- 
pairs. They  installed  a  large  farm  with  a 
dairy,  supplying  butter  and  milk.  They 
started  industries,  such  as  sewing,  and  in  addi- 
tion to  sewing  circles,  gave  out  work  at  home. 
They  had  factories  for  mattresses  and  for 
furniture.  They  equipped  and  manned  com- 
pletely with  doctor  and  nurses,  a  civilian  hos- 
pital of  twenty  beds  at  Roye.  They  had 
gardens  tended  by  children,  where  four  thou- 
sand cabbages  were  raised.  Eventually,  they 
cared  for  sixty-nine  villages.  Aid  for  this 
work  came  to  them  from  many  sources,  as 
they  acknowledge  them  in  their  reports,  from 
as  far  away  as  Sidney,  and  from  the  "Croix- 
Rouge  Ame'ricaine."  The  support  of  the  lat- 
ter was  whole  hearted  and  generous  to  the 
limit  of  its  capacity  at  Ham  and  Nesle. 


Ii8  Helping  France 

Although,  geographically,  the  latest  effort 
of  the  Secours  d'Urgence  for  the  devastated 
area  does  not  belong  to  the  Somme  alone,  but 
to  all  of  France,  its  place  is  here.  It  con- 
cerns itself  with'  Christmas.  In  1917,  through- 
out the  liberated  area,  the  government,  the 
church,  and  agencies  occupied  with  relief 
there,  gave  to  the  children  the  first  Christmas 
they  had  had  for  three  years.  In  1918,  a 
vaster  field  was  freed  by  the  armistice.  The 
same  effort  was  repeated.  But  it  was  the 
Secours  d'Urgence  which  thought  of  an  ideal 
way.  With  the  approval  of  no  less  a  person 
than  M.  Clemenceau  they  enlisted  the  chil- 
dren of  all  the  public  kindergartens,  in  all  the 
departments  of  France,  to  make  a  Christmas 
for  their  "unknown  brothers  and  sisters,  de- 
prived for  so  long  of  every  joy.'*  The  pres- 
ents came  by  the  millions,  each  accompanied 
by  a  little  letter  to  the  unknown  recipient. 
Most  of  them  were  given,  not  by  children  of 
wealth,  but  by  the  poor,  many  of  them  them- 
selves tiny  refugees.  One  little  girl  of  five 


"Polishing  Tarnished  Mirrors"    119 

came  with  her  teacher  to  the  office  of  the 
society,  to  say  that  she  would  give  her  doll. 
"But/*  she  added,  "I  want  to  remain  with  her 
as  long  as  I  can.'*  The  kind-hearted  lady  in 
charge  of  the  office  told  her  the  very  latest 
date  on  which  she  must  return.  When  she 
came,  with  her  eyes  full  of  tears,  her  doll  held 
tightly  to  her  cheek,  the  lady  thought  she 
would  never  be  able  to  give  it  up.  But  she 
did,  saying  only:  "Please  tell  her  that  she 
must  take  care  of  my  doll  as  I  did,  and  love 
her  as  I  used  to  do!"  Another  story  is  that 
of  a  little  boy  who  had  nothing,  nothing  at  all 
except  some  pills.  He  had  been  a  refugee, 
starved  and  ill,  and  these  cod-liver  oil  pills, 
which  a  doctor  had  given  him,  had  been  a 
great  help.  He  would  share  them!  So,  in 
the  quaint  English  of  the  lady  who  told  the 
incident,  "he  took  them  to  the  Bureau 
preciously,  for  those  pills  meant  health  to  him, 
his  own  health.'* 

To  have  aided,  much  or  little  as  the  case 
may  be,  such  efforts  as  are  recorded  here,  is  it 


120  Helping  France 

not,  in  the  words  a  noted  French  writer  quotes 
in  regard  to  this  very  society,  to  have  helped 
in  "polishing  the  tarnished  mirrors,  in  restor- 
ing the  ideal  flame?  " 


House  on  the  Luce  Plateau  (near  Amiens). 

Reflexions  et  Croquis  twr  I' Architecture  au  Pay*  de  France:   Georges  Wabo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 


CHAPTER  X 

BEHIND   THE   BRITISH   LINES 

THE  activities  centering  at  Amiens  dif- 
ferentiate themselves  sharply  from  those 
of  the  southern  end  of  the  department.  In 
the  first  place,  Amiens  was  behind  the  British 
lines  which,  at  this  point,  never  broke.  The 
city,  itself,  though  severely  bombarded  during 
the  last  German  advance  in  the  spring  of  1918, 
was  not  devastated,  and  stood  as  a  bulwark  for 
the  territory  stretching  from  it  to  the  channel, 

which   the   Germans   never   took.     But   un- 

121 


122  Helping  France 

scathed  as  it  was  at  the  time  that  the  American 
Red  Cross  entered  it,  in  September,  1917,  it 
had  been  for  three  years — what  it  still  is — one 
of  the  main  gateways  for  the  passing  and  re- 
passing  of  refugees.  In  the  Somme,  there 
were  over  thirty-five  thousand  of  these,  not 
counting  at  all  those  who  had  remained  in,  or 
found  their  way  back  to,  their  villages  in  the 
devastated  area  itself.  Half  of  these  refugees 
were  crowded  into  the  city,  which  was  further 
strained  beyond  its  housing  capacity  by 
thousands  of  British  troops.  Add  to  this  the 
fact  that  building — except  for  absolutely  neces- 
sary army  barracks  for  army  purposes — had 
ended  automatically  with  the  call  to  arms, 
and  one  can  see  the  enormous  problem  in 
public  health  and  in  housing  presented  by  the 
city  of  Amiens.  In  short,  in  an  acute  and 
exaggerated  form,  the  problem  was  the  same 
as  that  facing  our  city  charities  at  home;  con- 
gestion and  lack  of  employment,  resulting  in 
insufficient  nourishment  and  the  spread  of 
disease. 


Behind  the  British  Lines       123 

The  city  of  Amiens,  the  Department  of 
which  it  is  the  capital,  and  the  Ministry  of  the 
Interior  behind  both  had  already  perfected 
an  admirable  scheme  for  the  handling  of  the 
transient  refugees,  who  passed  from  bom- 
barded areas  to  the  south,  or  from  the  south 
back  to  liberated  villages.  Shelters,  in  charge 
of  the  army,  were  always  ready  to  accommo- 
date them,  to  the  number  of  twelve  hundred 
and  fifty  at  a  time;  a  stipulated  sum  of 
money  was  given  each  refugee  on  his  arrival 
for  immediate  needs,  food,  of  course,  and 
clothing  as  necessary.  Afterwards  he  was 
painstakingly  helped  to  reach  his  destination. 
Lieut.  Pianelli,  who  administered  this  relief, 
was  himself  a  refugee  from  St.  Quentin,  and 
his  own  wife  was  a  German  captive.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  the  handling  of  the  end- 
less stream  of  refugees  at  Amiens  was  done 
with  sympathetic  care. 

But  the  refugee  unable  to  get  beyond 
Amiens,  or  choosing  to  remain  there,  became 
the  concern  of  the  city  and  of  the  prefecture. 


124  Helping  France 

If  in  need,  he  had,  of  course,  his  allowance 
from  the  government,  as  a  refugee.  Or  if 
the  dependent  of  a  soldier,  an  approximately 
equal  amount  was  paid.  Of  the  ten  thousand 
refugees  in  Amiens  to  whom  these  allowances 
were  granted  nearly  fifteen  hundred  were  the 
wives,  widows  or  children  of  the  soldiers  of 
France.  Committees,  styled  departmental 
committees,  composed  of  public-spirited  cit- 
izens, assisted  in  the  care  of  the  refugees  of 
tkeir  respective  departments.  Of  these,  there 
were  four;  that  of  the  Nord,  that  of  the  Aisne, 
that  of  the  Pas-de-Calais,  and  that  of  the 
Somme  itself.  There  were  private  agencies 
also,  the  largest  and  most  influential  being 
that  of  the  Secours  aux  Blesses  Militaires  of 
the  French  Red  Cross.  The  Secours  d'Ur- 
gence,  and  the  Somme  De*vaste*e  among  French 
societies,  had  posts  established  here  also, 
the  latter  being  one  of  the  many  organiza- 
tions founded  by  the  wealthy  and  patriotic 
ladies  of  the  devastated  area  itself. 

Among  foreign  societies,  and  most  directly 


Behind  the  British  Lines      125 

concerning  this  narrative,  were  the  American 
Fund  for  French  Wounded  and  the  Secours 
Anglo-Ame*ricain  pour  les  Re*fugies.  The  lat- 
ter, under  American  management,  had  already 
been  operating  two  years  among  the  fugitives 
in  Amiens  when  the  American  Red  Cross  del- 
egate arrived.  Five  resident  workers,  of  whom 
one  was  a  nurse,  and  six  French  volunteer 
workers  comprised  its  staff.  With  the  close 
cooperation  of  the  Preset,  one  of  whose  daugh- 
ters was  a  regular  volunteer  visitor,  they  or- 
ganized the  type  of  charitable  relief  we  know 
in  America  as  district  visiting.  They  also 
started  the  first  workroom  in  Amiens  for  the 
women  refugees.  Their  support,  while  drawn 
from  many  sources,  came  largely,  at  this  time, 
from  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House. 
They  therefore  naturally  turned  to  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  for  a  similar  subsidy.  The 
result  was  that  the  latter  took  over  and  en- 
larged their  activities  and  absorbed  their 
personnel. 

In  addition  to  this,  and  in  cooperation  with 


126  Helping  France 

the  American  Fund  for  French  Wounded,  the 
American  Red  Cross  through  its  Children's 
Bureau  opened  a  dispensary  for  the  refugees  in 
Amiens,  in  March,  1918.  This  was  an  exten- 
sion of  the  dispensary  of  Nesle.  But  in  so  far 
as  these  two  lines  of  service  affect  the  refugees, 
the  details  of  their  development  fall  outside 
the  limits  of  this  book.  In  fact,  the  dele- 
gate of  the  Red  Cross  in  Amiens,  being  as- 
signed to  the  undevastated  area  of  the  Somme, 
was  in  reality  the  first  of  the  many  refugee 
delegates  who  were  later  sent  by  the  Refugee 
Bureau  of  the  Red  Cross  to  similar  service  in 
every  department  of  France. 

Two  phases  of  the  Red  Cross  work  in  Amiens 
belong  here,  however;  that  of  the  warehouse, 
and  that  of  the  workroom  already  mentioned, 
started  by  the  Secours  Anglo- Am^ricain. 
From  a  group  of  twelve  workers,  in  September, 
1917,  this  had  grown  in  February,  1918,  to 
thirty-two  workers,  turning  out  four  hundred 
and  eighty  finished  garments  a  week.  It  con- 
sumed materials  on  a  wholesale  scale,  as  illus- 


Behind  the  British  Lines      127 

trated  by  requisitions  for  four  thousand  meters 
flannel,  fifteen  hundred  meters  sateen,  black, 
for  pinafores,  fifteen  hundred  meters  velveteen, 
for  suits,  thirty-six  dozen  boxes  of  thread, 
and  ten  thousand  buttons.  But  the  unique 
service  of  this  workroom  was  the  one  designed 
and  carried  into  operation  by  the  Red  Cross 
delegate.  It  cut  and  shipped  to  all  work- 
rooms within  reaching  distance,  the  garments 
which  they  in  turn  made  up.  Thus  it  became 
the  center  of  supply  for  the  ouvroirs  at  Nesle, 
Ham,  Lassigny  and  Noyon,  already  mentioned, 
an  important  cog  in  the  chain  of  cooperation 
which  the  American  Red  Cross  was  trying  to 
forge.  It  was  also,  with  every  ouvroir  in  France, 
a  connecting  link  between  the  refugees  tem- 
porarily, at  least,  static,  and  the  refugees  in 
transit  or  in  process  of  establishment,  the  one 
class  being  engaged  in  filling  that  immense 
reservoir  from  which  the  other  might  draw. 

The  warehouse  in  Amiens,  like  the  work- 
room, served  both  classes  of  unfortunates,  the 
refugees  in  the  undevastated  area,  and  the 


128  Helping  France 

sinistrfo  (sufferers)  and  rapatries,  (repatriates) 
as  the  French  conveniently  designate  them, 
who  were  trying  to  make  a  fresh  start  in  the 
two  devastated  departments  north  of  the 
Somme,  the  Nord  and  the  Pas-de-Calais. 
Arras  had  been  selected  as  a  center  for  the 
latter, xand  a  separate  delegate  appointed  to  it, 
but  an  actual  warehouse  was  never  established 
there.  This  city,  in  normal  times  possessing 
a  population  of  29,000,  had  been  under  con- 
stant bombardment  since  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  until  in  the  spring  of  1917,  the  victory  of 
Vimy  Ridge  freed  it  from  immediate  menace. 
At  one  time  only  three  hundred  souls  re- 
mained in  it,  subsisting  in  cellars.  Its  his- 
toric town  hall  was  already  in  ruins;  the 
wheat  lands  about  it  were  devastated  by  one 
of  the  greatest  struggles  of  the  war.  The 
porticoes  of  the  Petite  Place,  where  "on  the 
prettiest  stage  in  the  world  the  triumphal 
fete  of  the  grain  was  conducted  with  all  its 
peaceable  outcry,"  lay  shattered;  the  fields 
themselves  were  shell-plowed  wastes. 


Behind  the  British  Lines      129 

Yet  the  prefecture  and  the  army  were 
already  at  work,  with  tractors  and  construc- 
tion gangs.  The  American  Red  Cross,  enter- 
ing on  its  activities  here  simultaneously  with 
the  private  French  agencies,  instead  of  after 
them,  as  in  the  Somme  and  the  Oise,  put  itself 
as  did  they,  at  the  disposal  of  the  civil  authori- 
ties. No  federation  of  the  societies  was  at- 
tempted for  this  reason;  and  the  coopera- 
tion of  the  Red  Cross  delegate  with  the 
government  was  direct.  This  was  consid- 
ered the  most  practical  method  also,  owing 
to  the  stringent  rulings  of  the  British  army 
zone. 

As  it  was,  great  difficulties  were  encoun- 
tered, no  warehouse  could  be  found,  and  no 
transportation  by  truck  arranged.  To  make 
the  situation  more  difficult,  there  was  not — as 
there  is  not  to  this  day* — a  direct  rail  com- 
munication with  Amiens.  The  railroad  across 
the  battlefields  has  been  wiped  out.  But  at 
last,  on  February  25,  1918,  the  first  general 

* January,  1919.  • 


130  Helping  France 

distribution  to  the  outlying  villages  was  made. 
The  mayors  of  thirty-two  communes  were  in- 
vited to  come  in  person  to  receive  the  goods 
allotted  to  them.  Into  the  ruins  of  Arras, 
that  wintry  day,jthey  came,  in  every  imagin- 
able makeshift  of  a  vehicle,  not  to  chaffer  or 
to  buy,  but  to  receive  the  gifts  to  their  com- 
munes of  the  American  Red  Cross.  From 
the  Church  of  the  Ardents,  half-destroyed, 
were  taken  four  hundred  and  twenty-seven 
wheelbarrows  which  had  been  stored  there; 
from  the  warerooms  loaned  by  the  Prefecture, 
two  hundred  and  twelve  sacks  of  sugar  and 
twelve  thousand  francs'  worth  of  farming 
tools. 

What  a  contrast  to  former  market  days 
when  "under  the  arcades  were  heaped  casks, 
boxes,  coils  of  rope,  hardware,  faience,  old 
iron,  a  host  of  heterogeneous  objects.  And 
amid  them  all,  the  smell  of  the  barrooms,  of 
pipes,  of  'bistouilles,'  of  pungent  beer;  the 
slow  descent  and  balancing  of  the  tame 
pigeons,  and  at  regular  intervals,  the  melo- 


Behind  the  British  Lines      131 

dies  of  the  chimes  which  seemed  to  shake  from 
their  toy  gables  showers  of  goblins  and 
gnomes."* 

Yet  a  beginning  .  in  rehabilitation  in  the 
Pas-de-Calais  was  made,  and  plans  were  under 
way  for  a  second  delegate  and  a  larger  staff  to 
push  a  larger  scheme  of  service  when  the 
spring  drive  came.  To-day  Arras  lies  level 
with  the  plain  about  it — not  even  the  belfry 
stands  to  mark  the  site  of  the  old  town  hall. 

*  Henri  Potez:  Villes  Meurtries  de  France:  Arras. 


Lowland  Farm  (near  Soissons.) 


Reflexions  et  Croquis  aur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:  George*  Wgbo. 
HacheUe  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

CHAPTER  XI 


THE   PERSONAL  TOUCH 

WHO  has  not  heard  of  the  bitterly  con- 
tested Chemin  des  Dames,  of  the  well- 
nigh  impregnable  plateau  of  Craonne,  of  the 
capture  of  Soissons,  crowning  place  of  Clovis, 
of  St.  Quentin,  and  Chateau-Thierry  where  the 
American  dead  lie  to-day  on  the  hill  slopes,  a 
memorial  to  the  valor  of  the  American  Army 
to  which  was  given  the  glory  of  saving  Paris 
in  1918?  All  these  allied  victories  belong  to 
that  comparatively  small  political  division  now 

132 


The  Personal  Touch          133 

called  the  Aisne,  but  formerly  known  by  the 
proud  title  of  the  He  de  France.  All  were 
preceded  by  defeats  which  laid  in  ruins  the 
five  arrondissements  of  the  department. 

Naturally  the  devastation  of  the  Aisne  is 
quite  complete.  In  the  summer  of  1917,  after 
the  German  retreat,  the  heights  of  Craonne, 
and  the  Chemin  des  Dames  upon  their  summit, 
were  still  in  the  hands  of  the  Germans.  About 
the  base  of  this  promontory  to  the  south  and 
the  west  lay  the  lowlands  of  the  liberated  area, 
from  which  fifty  per  cent  of  the  civilians  had 
been  carried  into  captivity,  and  the  remainder 
of  the  population  had  fled  as  refugees. 

Before  the  war,  "the  He  de  France  was 
always  a  great  center  of  crowded  population, 
a  population  gay  and  seemly,  distributed  not 
in  large  cities,  but  in  little  villages  and  ham- 
lets which  clustered  in  the  valleys  and  on  the 
hills,  animating  the  countryside  and  the  per- 
spective of  the  horizon  by  the  picturesque  sil- 
houettes of  their  lovely  churches,  and  by  the 
grouping  of  their  cheerful  cottages  embowered 


134  Helping  France 

in  orchards  and  gardens.  Chateaux,  ancient 
and  modern,  princely  or  bourgeois,  were 
numerous.  Everywhere  breathed  a  sense  of 
well-being,  of  ease  and  of  wealth."* 

Into  this  region,  once  so  fertile  and  now  so 
disfigured,  the  American  Red  Cross  entered 
in  September,  1917,  establishing  at  Soissons 
what  grew  to  be  the  largest  of  its  warehouses, 
which  never  carried  a  stock  of  less  than  ten 
thousand  dollars'  worth.  The  other  agencies 
at  work  in  this  department  for  the  returning 
fugitives  were  only  four  in  number;  the  gov- 
ernment and  the  army,  the  American  Fund 
for  French  Wounded,  the  Aisne  DeVaste*e  and 
the  Village  Reconstitue*  working  together,  and 
the  Bishop  of  Soissons.  Between  the  Amer- 
ican Fund  for  French  Wounded  as  a  whole, 
and  the  American  Red  Cross,  a  definite  affilia- 
ation  had  been  established,  and  this  was  ex- 
tended to  the  civilian  section  of  the  American 
Fund  located  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  Aisne 
at  BMrancourt.  The  history  of  this  society 

*  Marius  Vachon:   Les  Villes  Martyres  de  France  et  de  Belgique. 


The  Personal  Touch          135 

and  of  our  relations  with  it,  which  covered 
work  in  six  of  the  devastated  departments, 
becomes  of  interest. 

The  American  Fund  for  French  Wounded 
was,  in  point  of  time,  the  first  of  all  American 
societies  to  come  to  the  aid  of  France.  It  grew 
out  of  the  American  Committee  formed  by 
Mr.  Hoover  in  London  for  the  relief  of  Amer- 
ican refugees,  who,  by  the  thousands,  were 
driven  out  of  the  continent  at  the  opening  of 
hostilities  in  1914.  By  autumn,  their  needs 
had  been  met,  but  in  October  a  French  woman 
came  to  the  office  of  the  Committee  and 
chanced  to  find  Mrs.  Lathrop  there.  She 
begged  for  the  French  wounded,  and  so 
effectively  that  a  committee  was  formed  by 
Mrs.  Lathrop  in  London,  with  a  supporting 
branch  hi  America.  In  1915,  this  American 
branch  established  its  own  headquarters  in 
Paris,  as  the  American  Fund  for  French 
Wounded.  It  has  worked  from  the  beginning 
with  the  French  army  and  more  recently  with 
the  American  army.  But  it  has  also  done 


136  Helping  France 

work  for  civilians,  for  the  same  reason  that 
the  American  Red  Cross  has  done  work  for 
civilians,  because  war  was  carried  systemat- 
ically by  Germany  into  the  homes  of  civilians. 
The  first  appeal  for  this  help  came  from  Noyon. 
From  that  time  the  A.  F.  F.  W.  began  the 
collecting  of  supplies  for  civilian  relief.  In  all 
the  chapters  of  the  society  in  America,  gar- 
ments cut  in  French  patterns  were  made. 
Money  was  raised,  equipment  bought,  and  in 
June,  1917,  the  Civilian  Section  began  its 
work.  To  it  the  military  authorities  assigned 
two  posts  in  the  devastated  area,  one  at 
Blerancourt  in  the  Aisne,  and  the  other, 
manned  by  the  Smith  College  Unit,  already 
mentioned,  in  the  Somme. 

In  Blerancourt  itself  three  hundred  of  the 
fifteen  hundred  peace-time  population  were 
back.  Besides  Blerancourt,  fourteen  neigh- 
boring villages  were  assigned  to  the  unit. 
Before  the  spring  offensive  of  1918,  these  vil- 
lages had  increased  to  forty.  Repair  work 
was  effectively  carried  on  with  the  help  of  ths 


The  Personal  Touch          137 

army;  and  the  shelters  erected  were  in  each 
case  furnished  throughout.  A  dispensary  was 
opened  in  charge  of  a  nurse,  and  later  of  a  doc- 
tor. A  children's  department  under  a  French 
teacher  of  special  training  in  industrial  schools 
was  established,  with  cooking  classes  for  the 
girls,  carpentry  classes  for  the  boys,  and  gym- 
nastics for  all.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that 
the  cooperation  of  army  officers  was  enlisted 
for  these  carpentry  classes,  and  the  actual 
teaching  done  by  soldiers  assigned  by  them 
for  the  purpose.  The  material  used  was 
largely  the  boxes  in  which  supplies  for  the 
committee  'had  been  packed.  The  tables, 
chairs,  and  book  cases  made  went^either  to  the 
school,  or  to  the  boys'  own  homes. 

There  was  a  model  dairy,  fronTwhich  fifty 
families  were  supplied  with  milk.  Most  im- 
portant of  all,  there  was  a  comprehensive 
agricultural  programme  commensurate  with 
the  richness  of  the  soil,  which  yields  normally 
three  times  the  average  crop  per  acre  of  that 
produced  in  other  parts  of  France. 


138  Helping  France 

Besides  the  American  Fund  for  French 
Wounded,  the  Aisne  De*vaste*e  and  the  Vil- 
lage Reconstitue*  were  the  only  private  agen- 
cies which  had  established  themselves  hi  the 
district.  The  function  of  the  Village  Recon- 
stitue*,  here  as  elsewhere,  was  to  erect  the  plant 
for  the  society  distributing  relief.  There  was 
need  of  this;  for  at  the  head  of  the  Aisne 
De*vaste*e  were  two  devoted  women  of  the 
department,  the  one,  Mme.  Firino,  having 
given  over  what  remained  of  her  chateau  to 
the  army,  and  the  other,  Mme.  Houde*,  being 
likewise  a  typical  chatelaine  of  the  north 
country — the  chatelaine  of  a  ruin.  But  Mme. 
Houde*  was  typical  in  another,  more  vital 
sense.  Before  the  war  she  had  taken  the 
greatest  interest  in  the  welfare  of  her  depend- 
ents. A  friend  who  lived  with  her  was  a 
nurse.  With  her  help  she  established  gym- 
Lastic  classes  for  a  hundred  young  girls  and 
boys  of  the  village:  She  was  concerned  also 
about  their  manners  and  their  morals,  in- 
structing classes  herself  in  that  greatest  of  all 


The  Personal  Touch         139 

arts,  the  making  of  a  home.  It  was  inevitable 
that  Mme.  Houde*  should  have  interested  her- 
self, after  the  invasion,  not  only  in  the  wel- 
fare of  her  own  people,  but  in  that  of  the  entire 
department.  It  was  owing  to  her  that  the 
Aisne  De*vaste*e  was  organized.  In  the  early 
spring  of  1917,  it  had  been  able  to  send 
emergent  help  to  more  than  fifty  communes. 
It  had  its  workrooms,  hi  the  uninvaded  de- 
partments, from  which  its  storeroom  in  Paris 
was  supplied.  But  it  had  not  that  most 
essential  thing  in  the  devastated  area,  trans- 
portation. 

This  lack,  the  American  Red  Cross  and  the 
American  Fund  for  French  Wounded,  uniting 
in  the  Red  Cross  center  at  Soissons,  did  their 
best  to  meet.  As  more  of  the  invaded  terri- 
tory was  freed  by  the  successive  advances  of 
the  French  army  during  the  autumn,  lack  of 
personnel  was  another  keenly  felt  want.  Two 
members  of  the  Ble"rancourt  Unit,  and  two 
members  of  the  staff  of  the  American  Red 
Cross,  were  therefore  sent  out  as  agents  to 


140  Helping  France 

report  on  the  actual  needs  of  the  villages  in  the 
care  of  the  Aisne  De'vaste'e.  In  accordance 
with  the  findings  of  the  visitors,  the  goods  in 
the  warehouse  were  distributed. 

Other  distributors  of  Red  Cross  relief  were 
the  Bishop  of  Soissons  and  his  priests.  From 
the  latter  came  indirectly  a  touching  appeal 
for  help.  It  was  brought  by  the  Comtesse  de 
Bigode,  whose  own  chateau  and  village  were 
laid  in  ruins,  and  whose  husband,  remaining 
for  three  years  as  mayor  of  the  village  during 
the  German  occupation,  had  been  taken 
like  so  many,  a  hostage  to  Germany.  But 
the  Comtesse  asked  help  only  for  the  Bishop, 
who  was  "in  complete  need  of  everything  for 
his  clergy  and  had  nothing  with  which  to  cel- 
ebrate divine  service — a  black  misery."  Nor 
did  he  know  where  to  turn  for  help,  though 
he  had  come  back  to  his  ruined  cathedral  in 
Soissons  to  do  what  he  could.  The  Bishop's 
equally  touching  thanks  for  the  aid  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  gave  belong  here  also.  "  With 
the  sending  of  my  receipt  for  the  packages 


The  Personal  Touch         141 

which  you  shipped  me,"  he  writes,  "I  con- 
sider it  my  humble  duty  to  express  to  you  my 
warm  feelings  of  gratitude.  I  pray  God,  the 
source  of  all  charity,  to  reward  worthily  those 
who,  following  his  Holy  Commandments,  have 
compassion  on  their  unfortunate  brethren." 

But  this  help  was  by  no  means  given  to  the 
usual  poor  relief  of  the  church.  For  instance, 
one  village  cure*,  using  his  head  as  well  as  his 
heart,  found  that  his  parishioners  in  need  of 
the  stoves  and  boilers  furnished  him  by  the 
American  Red  Cross  for  distribution,  were 
anxious  to  pay  for  them.  He  therefore  sold 
them  on  the  installment  plan,  netted  ninety- 
five  francs  and  reinvested  this  capital  in 
articles  the  Red  Cross  did  not  carry  in  stock. 

The  sous-pre*fet  and  the  mayors  of  the  com- 
munes, as  in  the  Pas-de-Calais,  owing  to  the 
few  agencies  at  work,  had  more  put  at  their 
direct  disposal  in  the  Aisne  than  in  the  depart- 
ments where  the  relief  agencies  were  more 
numerous.  Here,  too,  cooperation  was  ex- 
cellent. One  town  received  a  carload  of  pro- 


142  Helping  France 

visions  which  was  unloaded  by  the  school  chil- 
dren and  placed  in  the  mayor's  cellar  awaiting 
his  distribution.  In  another,  Pommiers  (Ap- 
ple Orchards),  where  the  mayor,  an  old  man, 
was  also  the  delegate  of  the  Aisne  D£vast£e  for 
the  district,  hot  lunches  were  provided  for  the 
school  children  during  the  winter.  Without 
this  the  children,  many  of  whom  walked  two 
or  three  kilometres,  could  not  have  attended 
school.  In  another  village,  practically  inac- 
cessible to  markets,  an  old  woman  was  set 
up  in  a  grocery  store;  a  double  form  of  help, 
giving  her  an  income  and  the  village  a  means 
of  subsistence. 

It  becomes  evident  that  tne  work  of  the 
American  Red  Cross  in  the  Aisne,  centering 
as  it  did  both  investigation  and  supply  in  the 
warehouse  organization  at  Soissons,  and  using 
so  few  outside  agents,  was  the  most  personal 
of  the  four  warehouse  organizations  already 
studied.  It  was  the  least  formal,  requiring 
no  set  federation,  but  preventing  overlapping 
by  this  centralization.  Yet  it  covered  a  wide 


The  Personal  Touch          143 

territory,  and  already  had  another  branch 
established  at  Chateau-Thierry,  a  hospital, 
and  a  chain  of  workrooms  in  process  of  forma- 
tion when  the  spring  drive  came. 

It  abounds  in  personal  incidents,  such  as 
that  of  the  young  girl  who  ran  to  embrace  the 
visitor  of  the  American  Fund  for  French 
Wounded,  thanking  her  for  what  she  had  done. 
"But,"  the  visitor  protested,  "I  have  never 
seen  you  before."  "No,"  was  the  reply,  "for 
I  was  not  here,  but  you  did  everything  for  my 
mother  and  my  grandmother,  and  that  is  more 
than  if  you  had  done  it  for  me."  There  was 
the  poor  old  woman  in  Chateau-Thierry  who 
pressed  thirty  francs  upon  the  Red  Cross 
delegate  saying  that  she  and  some  of  the 
neighbors  wished  to  give  them  as  a  contribu- 
tion because  the  Red  Cross  had  moved  some 
sick  friends  of  theirs  from  the  danger  zone  to 
Paris.  There  was  the  small  merchant  whose 
house  and  store  were  destroyed  by  bombs,  but 
whose  household  goods  were  rescued.  "Say 
also,"  he  writes,  "to  those  gentlemen  of  the 


144  Helping  France 

American  Red  Cross  how  grateful  I  am  to 
them  for  having  saved  my  cherished  heirlooms. 
What  the  days  to  follow  may  bring,  we  do  not 
know,  but  the  remembrance  of  the  kindly  feel- 
ings you  have  evoked  in  us,  will  remain  alive 
and  be  for  us  a  precious  comfort." 

The  Red  Cross  kept  its  economic  end  in 
view,  to  aid  the  producers,  and  primarily  the 
agricultural  producers,  of  the  Aisne.  It  kept 
in  touch  also  with  those  needs  which  are  met 
only  by  personal  interest.  One  is  reminded 
of  the  ether  dream  of  a  certain  soldier,  who  fan- 
cied that  he  of  all  living  beings  had  survived 
the  destruction  of  the  world.  Only  he  and 
God  were  left  to  survey  the  ghastly  inferno 
of  His  once  fair  handiwork.  So  vivid  was  the 
dream,  so  horrible  the  sense  of  utter  isolation, 
that  the  patient  turned  to  the  nurse:  "I  beg 
your  pardon,"  he  said,  "but  would  you  mind 
just  touching  my  hand?"  That  personal  con- 
tact is  the  most  valuable  gift  that  the  Red 
Cross  gave  in  the  inferno  of  the  Aisne. 


Street  in  Fontenoy. 

Reflexions  et  Croquis  jur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:   Georges  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

CHAPTER  XII 

OUR   PRESENCE   WITH   THEM 

ON  March  21,  1918,  began  the  German 
drive.  It  was  not  unexpected;  all 
through  the  winter  the  thunder  of  guns 
shook  the  barracks  and  the  ruins  of  the  re- 
turning refugees,  who  crept  ever  nearer  to  the 
lines.  From  Cambrai,  St.  Quentin,  and  the 
Chemin  des  Dames  came  daily  rumors  of 
advance  or  of  retreat.  Overhead  the  Ger- 
man aeroplanes  increased  their  activities. 
Each  month  the  moon,  rising  to  the  full, 

145 


146  Helping  France 

and  lighting  the  earth  with  traitorous  beauty, 
became  more  true  to  the  name  the  poilus  gave 
it,  "La  lune  boche." 

But  no  one  anticipated  the  brutish  strength 
of  the  German  impact,  least  of  all  the  British 
army,  consolidating  the  new  lines  from  Cam- 
brai  to  St.  Quentin  which  it  had  taken  over 
from  the  French.  It  was  just  northeast  of 
Ham,  toward  St.  Quentin,  that  the  British 
line  gave  way.  Not  two  miles  from  this  front 
was  the  outpost  of  a  Friends'  constructive  unit; 
in  like  manner  the  Philadelphia  Unit,  only  five 
miles  back,  was  in  full  track  of  the  German 
flood.  At  Rosi&res,  at  Nesle,  at  Gre*court, 
at  Roye,  the  various  relief  units,  isolated, 
without  news  except  from  the  flying  troops, 
placed  all  their  resources  of  transport  at  the 
service  of  the  civilian  authorities  and  of  the 
army,  to  evacuate  the  populace.  With  their 
protege's  they  kept  just  out  of  reach  of  the 
Uhlan  cavalry.  Down  through  Lassigny  and 
Noyon  swept  once  again  the  German  army, 
confident  of  reaching  Paris  at  last.  Back 


Born  in  Flight  from  Lens,  191 4- 


Our  Presence  With  Them     147 

before  it  fell  the  relief  workers;  from  Noyon  to 
Compiegne,  from  Compiegne  to  Senlis,  and 
from  Soissons  at  length  to  Chateau-Thierry, 
where  the  great  drive  stopped. 

Meantime  from  the  Paris  office,  the  head 
of  the  Bureau  of  Reconstruction  and  Relief 
hurried  northward,  to  take  charge  of  the  sit- 
uation so  far  as  the  Red  Cross  was  concerned. 
With  him  went  also  the  head  of  the  refugee 
service.  From  this  point  until  the  armistice 
on  November  llth,  the  history  of  the  activi- 
ties of  the  American  Red  Cross  is  a  history  of 
emergent  relief.  In  all  the  territory  where  it 
was  working  out  its  experiments  of  construc- 
tive service,  its  work  was  swept  away,  and  the 
people  for  whom  it  labored  joined  the  already 
vast  army  of  homeless  refugees. 

The  loss  of  property,  of  the  home  built  like 
an  island  of  coral  by  the  patient  toil  of  hun- 
dreds of  years  above  the  vicissitudes  of  for- 
tune— again  we  have  no  conception  of  what  its 
loss  meant  to  the  peasant  of  France.  It  was 
attachment  to  his  home,  his  property,  that  had 


148  Helping  France 

rooted  him,  immovable,  in  the  path  of  the 
invader.  He  literally  stayed  until  the  last 
gun  was  fired.  And  even  in  his  flight,  be- 
hold him,  encumbered  with  rabbits,  chickens 
and  pet  canaries,  or  driving  before  him  in  the 
hurly-burly  of  bombardment,  his  sheep  or 
his  herd  of  cows.  "I  remember,"  said  a 
French  woman  of  letters  already  quoted,  "a 
poor  old  woman  (a  refugee)  whom  I  saw  at  the 
Gare  du  Nord;  she  had  lost  two  sons  at  the 
front,  suffered  many  miseries;  she  said  to  me: 
'To  suffer,  to  lose  one's  children,  it  is  sad  and 
it  is  hard,  yet  when  one  is  at  home,  everything 
can  be  endured.  But  when  one  has  to  flee, 
to  abandon  his  house  and  all  that  he  has  to 
the  keeping  of  others,  that  is  the  worst  of 
all.'" 

Like  the  American  Red  Cross,  every  relief 
agency  turned  its  hand  to  the  immediate 
need  not  only  of  the  refugees  but  of  the  sol- 
diers. For  there  were  in  the  path  of  the 
German  advance  at  this  time  as  yet  no  regu- 
lar delegates  of  the  military  department  of  the 


Our  Presence  With  Them     149 

American  Red  Cross,  so  unexpected  had  been 
the  catastrophe.  The  warehouses,  hastily 
emptied,  went  to  the  supply  of  the  British, 
French  or  American  armies,  and  whatever 
could  not  be  utilized  in  this  way  was  burned. 
One  reads  of  night  rides  of  Red  Cross  dele- 
gates over  shell-swept  roads  to  bring  ban- 
dages to  a  first-aid  dressing  station  installed 
in  one  of  these  warehouses.  Our  own  men, 
the  soldiers  of  the  immortal  Rainbow  Division, 
were  supplied  with  hot  drinks  and  food  at  a 
wayside  canteen.  Italian  soldiers  of  the  Gari- 
baldi command,  wounded  and  lying  upon 
straw,  were  given  sheets  and  bedding  and 
bandages.  The  evacuation  of  Reims  and  of 
Chalons  taxed  the  transportation  service.  A 
military  hospital  at  Beauvais,  so  desperately 
emergent  that  no  Red  Cross  nurses  could  be 
gotten  up  in  time,  was  taken  charge  of  by  the 
Smith  College  Unit.  In  like  manner,  the 
Philadelphia  Unit  drove  its  cars  as  ambu- 
lances behind  the  French  lines.  Other  units, 
such  as  the  American  Committee  for  Devas- 


150  Helping  France 

tated  France,  into  which  the  civilian  section 
of  the  American  Fund  for  French  Wounded 
had  separated,  were  large  enough  to  carry  on 
both  refugee  and  military  aid.  Soldiers'  can- 
teens, canteens  for  the  harvesters  who  fol- 
lowed hard  on  the  wake  of  the  Allied  advance, 
dispensaries,  farm  colonies,  children's  colo- 
nies and  refugee  committees  in  the  unin- 
vaded  departments  to  which  their  delegates 
had  accompanied  the  refugees  indicate  the 
wide  scope  of  their  work. 

The  holding  of  the  Germans  at  Chateau- 
Thierry  was  succeeded,  as  all  the  world  knows, 
by  the  victorious  offensive  of  Marshal  Foch. 
Everything  bent  to  the  grim  final  effort,  and 
the  civilian  service  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
with  it.  On  the  one  hand,  it  enlarged  its 
personnel  and  its  supplies  in  the  departments 
of  the  interior  to  serve  the  refugees.  On  the 
other,  it  shared  its  personnel,  its  stores  and 
its  warehouses  with  the  military  service  of  the 
Red  Cross  for  the  soldiers.  These  latter  were 
no  longer  exclusively  the  poilus  for  whom  the 


Our  Presence  With  Them     151 

Red  Cross  had  labored  up  to  this  time.  They 
were  overwhelmingly,  overpoweringly  our  own. 
In  the  trenches,  in  the  hospitals,  marching 
along  the  road  or  lying  under  the  wooden 
crosses  beside  it,  one  saw  them  everywhere, 
our  boys.  America  had  come  at  last  into  the 
war. 

With  her  advent  on  the  front,  there  was  not 
only  a  change  in  emphasis  between  the  depart- 
ment of  military  affairs  and  the  department  of 
civilian  affairs  of  the  Red  Cross.  There  was  a 
corresponding  change  of  organization.  Instead 
of  the  centralization  of  authority  in  Paris 
which  had  existed  up  to  the  time  of  the  drive, 
authority  was  now  centralized  in  the  field 
under  a  zone  commander  who  controlled  the 
activities  of  both  military  and  civilian  officers 
therein.  The  zones  of  control,  furthermore, 
corresponded  to  the  army  zones  into  which 
all  France  had  been  divided.  Warehouse 
space  was  shared,  or  military  and  civilian 
warehouses  complemented  each  other  in  the 
same  region.  There  could  be  no  sharp  de- 


152  Helping  France 

markation  between  emergencies,   civilian   or 
military.     It  was  a  time  to  spare  red  tape  and 
to  meet  the  emergency.     The  health  of  chil- 
dren, the  scourge  of  tuberculosis,  merged  into 
public  health   as   affecting   our  army.     The 
Children's  Bureau  was,   therefore,   detached 
from  the  Department  of  Civilian  Relief,  and 
placed  in  charge  of  the  Medical  and  Surgical 
Department.     Civilian  sweaters  and  food  sup- 
plies went  for  soldiers  going  into  or  coming 
out  of  action.     Civilian  units,   such  as  the 
Smith  College  Unit  and  the  various  units  of 
the  American  Fund  for  French  Wounded  ran 
military   canteens,    or   took   barge   loads    of 
wounded  down  the  canals  to  the  hospitals  in 
Paris.     Conversely,  our  soldiers  became  in- 
tensely interested  in  the  needs  of  the  civilians 
in  the  villages  where  they  were  billeted,  inso- 
much that  an  entire  new  bureau  of  the  Red 
Cross  has  been  created  to  care  for  the  orphans 
adopted  by  them. 

The  military  development  of  the  Red  Cross, 
hastened  by  the  catastrophes  of  the  spring 


Our  Presence  With  Them     153 

campaign,  was,  nevertheless,  in  the  minds 
of  the  War  Council  from  the  beginning;  the 
work  of  the  civilians  deriving  much  of  its 
value  from  the  fact  that  we  were  not  at  first 
able  to  put  our  alliance  to  effective  use  on  the 
battlefield.  Once  we  took  our  place  in  the 
line,  however,  our  prime  duty,  to  the  Allies  as 
well  as  to  ourselves,  was  to  our  own  military 
needs.  The  change,  sudden  as  it  was,  was 
logical.  The  service  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  in  the  devastated  area,  far  from  being  a 
loss,  was  of  direct  military  value  both  during 
its  prosecution  and  during  the  retreat.  The 
large  programme  of  rehabilitation  in  which  it 
played  its  part,  was  as  much  a  measure  of  war 
as  the  maneuvers  of  the  army.  Like  them, 
it  was  subject  to  defeat. 

In  the  words  of  the  head  of  the  Bureau  of 
Reconstruction  and  Relief,  just  before  he  left 
Paris  to  take  charge  of  the  danger  zone:  "On 
the  second  day  of  the  great  German  offensive, 
when  the  communiques  plainly  showed  the 
gravity  of  the  situation,  the  possibility  of  a 


154  Helping  France 

second  invasion,  and  the  destruction  of  our 
work  in  the  devastated  region,  this  Bureau 
wishes  to  go  on  record  as  absolutely  con- 
vinced that  it  has  done  too  little  rather  than 
too  much  and  that  it  intends  to  continue  the 
work,  whatever  menace  may  be  ahead,  so 
long  as  the  French  civilians  are  allowed  near 
the  lines  and  so  long  as  they  are  in  need.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  work  of  this 
Bureau  has  been  the  main  reliance  of  those 
civilians  in  at  least  three  French  departments. 
If  the  work  is  to  be  wrecked,  we  can  only  bow 
to  the  fortune  of  war,  but  we  want  no  one  to 
think  that  we  regret  the  presence  of  civilians 
in  the  zone  or  our  own  presence  there  with 
them,  or  to  think  that  we  count  as  lost  one 
cent  of  money  or  one  ounce  of  effort  expended 
in  their  behalf." 

Our  presence  with  them,  that  is  what 
counted.  The  sous-pre*fet  of  Compiegne  said 
to  our  delegate  there:  "I  shall  never  forget 
that  you  stood  by  us  when  everyone  else  had 
left."  In  spite  of  the  German  drive,  in  spite 


Our  Presence  With  Them     155 

of  military  exigencies,  to  have  kept  in  touch 
with  his  civilian  co-laborers,  such  is  the  record 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  delegate  in  the 
Oise.  Most  of  the  agencies  there,  dislodged 
and  deflected  as  they  were,  are  back  in  their 
old  villages.  Through  the  warehouse  in  Com- 
piegne,  the  American  Red  Cross  has  been 
able  to  render  them  more  valuable  service  this 
year  than  last.  The  vicissitudes,  the  losses 
shared  together  have  made  a  stronger  bond  of 
union  than  could  otherwise  have  been  welded. 
New  societies  have  come  into  the  field.  The 
American  Red  Cross  itself  at  the  first  return 
of  the  civilians  has  opened  a  new  service  in  a 
traveling  dispensary. 

The  cardinal  fact  of  the  retreat,  then,  is 
this:  That  everywhere,  in  the  Oise,  in  the 
Somme,  and  in  the  Aisne,  where  the  lines  of 
the  armies  were  broken,  the  lines  of  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross — those  lines  of  mercy,  of  suc- 
cor, of  emergent  service — held. 


Village  Hall  at  Fismes. 


Reflexions  et  Croquis  «ur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:   Georges  Wj/bo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   ROAD   TO    VERDUN 

ALMOST  due  east  from  Chateau-Thierry 
lies  Chalons,  and  beyond  Chalons,  Ver- 
dun. Chalons  is  the  departmental  center  of 
the  Marne;  Verdun,  the  frontier  fortress  of 
the  Meuse,  upon  which  for  four  years  has 
pivoted  the  defense  of  the  world.  These  two 
departments,  shaken  though  they  were  by  the 
German  offensive  of  1918,  held  their  ground. 
In  one  of  them,  the  Marne,  the  reconstruction 

156 


The  Road  to  Verdun         157 

work  begun  by  the  English  Friends  in  1914 
still  continues.  It  affords  that  positive  argu- 
ment for  the  return  to  the  soil  of  its  tillers 
which  many  questioned  after  the  disaster  of 
the  Somme. 

Like  her  sister  departments,  the  Marne  had 
been  devastated.  Here  in  her  valleys  was 
fought  the  battle  for  the  possession  of  Paris 
in  the  summer  of  1914.  On  the  southern  side 
of  the  river,  one  sees  everywhere  the  skeletons 
of  once  smiling  villages;  in  the  marshes  of 
St.  Gond,  one  hears,  a  whole  squadron  of 
German  cavalry  was  sucked  down  to  death. 
At  Heiltz-le-Maurupt,  the  Prince  of  Hesse 
made  his  entry,  and  sacked  and  set  the  village 
on  fire.  A  veteran  of  1870  was  shot  as  he 
stood  in  his  doorway ;  the  skirt  of  his  old  wife 
who  stood  beside  him  was  riddled  with  bullets. 
At  Bignicourt,  one  old  man  was  left  alone; 
his  wife  and  two  children  having  been  suffo- 
cated in  the  cellar  when  the  house  was  burned 
over  their  heads.  Two  women,  a  mother  and 
her  daughter,  drowned  themselves  on  hearing 


158  Helping  France 

that  the  Germans  were  about  to  take  the  vil- 
lage. The  husband,  asking  permission  to 
search  for  his  wife's  body,  was  put  in  prison. 
So  run  the  tales  in  all  the  countryside.  And, 
after  the  victory,  only  a  few  days  after,  the 
neighbors  coming  back  to  the  ruins,  took 
stock  of  their  losses. 

Of  property,  horses,  farm  animals  and  fur- 
niture, practically  nothing  remained.  Of  the 
families  themselves,  here  are  typical  records: 
A  mother  and  five  children,  one  son  dead,  two 
others  at  the  front;  a  widow  seventy-four 
years  old,  her  husband  killed  by  the  Germans, 
one  son  at  the  front;  a  spinster,  seventy- two 
years  old,  her  sister  dead  of  the  hardships 
suffered  in  the  course  of  her  flight  at  the  time 
of  the  battle;  a  young  girl,  her  father  and 
mother  having  died  of  heart  failure  at  the 
time  of  the  bombardment;  a  mother,  her  two 
sons  mobilized  and  one  of  them  wounded;  a 
retired  teacher,  aged  seventy-two,  and  his 
aged  wife,  without  resource. 

Yet  in  these  villages,  as  elsewhere,  the  in- 


The  Road  to  Verdun         159 

habitants  shared  the  feeling  of  the  old  woman 
of  whom  Rene*  Benjamin  writes  in  "  Un  Pauvre 
Village,"  * — any  village,  anywhere  in  devas- 
tated France,  as  he  explains.  She  is  returning 
with  her  little  granddaughter.  "  The  little  girl 
asked: 

"'Is  it  much  further,  grandmother?' 
"And  she,  she  knew  that  it  was  there,  and 
she  recognized  nothing. 

"The  church,  the  road,  the  gardens,  the 
houses,  the  trembling  poplars,  the  pond  which 
mark  a  bright  spot  in  the  valley — all  dead, 
vanished,  all  fallen,  overturned,  destroyed. — 
Is  it  far?  Alas,  we  are  here!  .  .  .  This  is  her 
country,  her  life.  It  is  here  that  she  passed 
long  days,  this  old  woman,  here  where  lie 
all  the  thoughts  of  her  poor  head,  all  visions, 
desires,  her  past,  her  memory.  And  all  is 
sacked,  pillaged,  torn  to  pieces!  Massacre 
and  death;  she,  herself,  dying,  it  seems;  but 
her  first  word  does  not  portray  her  own  suf- 
fering; she  thinks  still  of  her  old  and  wretched 

*  G.  Weil,  Publisher.  Paris. 


160  Helping  France 

friend,  this  village  which  is  no  more  than  a 
shapeless,  miserable  heap,  and  in  a  voice 
heavy  with  the  grief  of  the  aged  who 
realize  all  the  sufferings  of  life,  she  groans 
only: 

'Oh!  ...  Mon  Dieu!  .  .  .  The  poor  thing!'" 
It  was  the  privilege  of  the  English  Friends 
to  come  into  the  Marne  only  two  months  after 
the  battle  of  the  Marne  had  been  won.  From 
the  Marne,  they  extended  their  work  into  the 
Meuse.  Both  are  agricultural  departments, 
of  rolling  hills  and  valleys,  vines  and  grassy 
meadows,  watered  by  the  two  historic  rivers 
which  have  given  them  their  respective  names. 
In  both,  the  wounds  of  the  invasion  were  still 
fresh.  If  one  recalls  reading,  in  far-away 
America,  the  course  of  the  battles  so  recently 
fought  here;  the  headlines  of  Armageddon, 
the  horror  that  seemed  to  envelop  even  our 
peaceful  lives,  he  has  some  faint  conception 
of  the  emotional  as  well  as  the  physical  over- 
whelming of  the  first  days  of  the  war.  The 
Friends  shared  this  emotion. 


The  Road  to  Verdun         161 

From  the  moment  when  they  threw  open 
their  meeting  house  at  Folkestone  to  the  first 
Belgian  refugees,  their  consuming  desire  has 
been  to  help;  and  their  plan  is  to  help  not 
masses,  but  individuals.  Out  of  this  fact 
comes  one  of  the  strange  contrasts  of  the  war. 
They,  living  with  the  peasants,  becoming 
"Villagers  of  the  Villages,"  could  doubtless 
recount  more  German  atrocities  than  any 
other  group  of  soc  al  workers  in  France.  They, 
pacifists,  conscientious  objectors  haters  of 
all  war,  could  equally  gather  the  proofs  for 
the  statement  that  home  service,  next  to 
fighting  itself,  is  the  service  of  greatest  value 
in  winning  the  war.  They,  who  knew  every 
family  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in  the 
territory  from  Esternay  to  Verdun,  could  tell 
you  that  there  is  practically  not  one  but  has 
husband,  sons,  or  brothers  at  the  front.  Yet 
they  have  performed  their  service  from  an 
ideal  and  spiritual  motive.  They  have  seen 
only  the  misfortunes;  they  have  pitied,  but 
they  have  not  judged. 


162  Helping  France 

At  the  time  of  the  arrival  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  in  France,  there  were  already  work- 
ing in  the  Marne  and  the  Meuse  about  a 
hundred  and  fifty  of  these  English  Friends. 
On  the  same  ship  with  the  Red  Cross  Com- 
missioner, there  sailed  from  America  two  rep- 
resentatives of  the  American  Friends  desirous 
of  effecting  a  working  agreement  whereby 
they  too  might  work  in  France.  This  plan 
was  welcomed  not  only  by  the  English 
Friends,  but  by  the  American  Red  Cross,  and 
large  funds  were  placed  at  its  disposal.  Up  to 
November  11,  1918,  this  arrangement  had 
resulted  in  an  increase  of  the  Friends'  per- 
sonnel from  150  to  between  500  and  600,  half 
of  whom  are  Americans.  The  direct  appro- 
priations of  the  American  Red  Cross,  keeping 
pace  with  this  increase  in  numbers,  have  sup- 
plied during  this  period  half  of  the  entire 
money  expended. 

The  American  Friends,  on  the  other  hand, 
have  held  themselves  in  readiness  to  do  any 
work  that  the  Red  Cross  required  of  them. 


The  Road  to  Verdun          163 

They  have  put  up  barracks  for  hospitals, 
erected  shelters  for  workers,  done  expert  ser- 
vice such  as  running  the  saw  mill  at  Noyon, 
and  gathering  in  the  harvests  last  summer  on 
the  second  battlefield  of  the  Marne.  But 
the  prime  end  for  which  the  Red  Cross  de- 
signed the  Friends'  Units — agricultural  re- 
construction— was  hopelessly  deferred  by  the 
sinister  spring  of  1917.  They  were  there- 
fore free  to  collaborate  entirely  with  their 
predecessors,  the  English  group.  The  activ- 
ities in  which  these  latter  engage  are  divided, 
like  those  of  the  Red  Cross  itself,  into  service 
for  refugees  from  the  devastated  area,  and 
those  remaining  hi  it  or  returning  to  it.  Be- 
sides, they  have  a  very  important  branch 
unlike  anything  undertaken  by  any  other  relief 
agency,  the  manufacture  of  demountable 
houses,  already  mentioned. 

In  the  Meuse,  and  in  the  Marne,  the  activ- 
ties  of  the  Friends  are  five  in  number:  Re- 
construction, agriculture,  medical  aid,  trans- 
port, economic  relief.  Of  these,  reconstruc- 


164  Helping  France 

tion  and  agriculture  have  been  the  big  pro- 
gramme. By  the  end  of  1916,  500  houses  had 
already  been  put  up  or  repaired.  This  prac- 
tically finished  the  building  undertaken  for 
small  holders  in  these  two  departments,  until 
the  lines  should  move  again.  But  there  re- 
mained a  very  interesting  experiment  which 
was  carried  out.  Not  all  the  farmers,  nat- 
urally, owned  their  land.  There  were  shep- 
herds, farriers,  and  small  dependents  of  larger 
holdings.  Failing  to  own  land,  no  one  was 
entitled  to  a  house.  Yet  his  services,  or  those 
of  his  wife,  were  he  absent,  were  most  valu- 
able at  a  time  when  farm  labor  was  almost 
impossible  to  obtain.  The  Friends  therefore 
secured  two  grants  of  waste  land,  and  upon 
them  erected  two  model  villages  of  perhaps 
thirty  houses  each  for  landless  refugees.  The 
houses  themselves  are  two-room,  three-room, 
or  four-room  dwellings  of  red  brick  with  red 
tile  roofs.  Each  has  its  door-yard  of  flowers, 
its  neat  gate  and  wicket  fence.  The  sidewalk 
is  bordered  by  newly  set  trees;  the  drainage 


The  Road  to  Verdun         165 

system  is  complete,  and  the  life  of  the 
pigmy  village  centers  around  a  steeple-roofed 
well. 

Unlike  building,  agriculture  is  perennial. 
The  Friends  had  five  establishments  in  the 
Marne  and  Meuse,  with  a  permanent  force  of 
twenty-one  men.  In  the  sector  about  Sermaize, 
which  was  the  largest  center  for  all  kinds  of 
relief,  two  hundred  and  thirty  acres  were 
plowed  last  year,  half  of  which  were  also  har- 
rowed and  sown.  One  hundred  machines, 
mostly  mowers  and  binders,  were  loaned  out 
to  the  farmers  and  kept  track  of;  five  hundred 
machines  in  all  had  been  repaired.  Hay  was 
mowed,  grain  was  cut,  and  nine  hundred  and 
three  tons  of  it  were  threshed.  Besides,  the 
farms  were  stocked  for  breeding  rabbits, 
chickens,  sheep  and  goats. 

Next  to  agriculture,  in  the  line  of  economic 
relief,  are  the  industries  for  women  in  which 
the  Friends  excel.  At  Bar-le-Duc,  they  have 
availed  themselves  of  an  industry  long  estab- 
lished in  the  region;  white  embroidery  of 


166  Helping  France 

linen  and  underwear.  But  this  requires  skilled 
workers.  There  was  imperative  need  at  Ser- 
maize  of  a  simpler  craft,  which  should  occupy 
the  time  and  the  thought  of  the  homeless 
refugees  crowded  into  the  once  fashionable 
bathing  casino  there.  Before  shelters  could 
be  built  for  them,  these  unfortunates  in- 
habited a  human  bee-hive,  a  village  of  three 
hundred  souls,  where  each  family  possessed 
only  a  cubicle,  often  without  light,  and  prac- 
tically without  air.  As  rapidly  as  possible, 
the  worst  features  of  this  overcrowding  were 
remedied  and  eventually  the  families  were 
reinstated  in  homes  of  their  own.  But  they 
comprised  a  population  of  field  workers  or 
factory  hands,  unaccustomed  to  the  use  of 
the  needle.  For  them,  a  special  form  of  em- 
broidery in  colored  wools  on  linen — old  linen 
such  as  many  of  them  still  possessed — was 
designed.  To  these  industries  has  been  added 
straw  plaiting.  All  are  flourishing,  the  prod- 
ucts being  sold  in  the  fashionable  Parisian 
stores. 


The  Road  to  Verdun         167 

Transport,  indispensable  as  it  is,  resolves 
itself  always  into  terms  of  machines,  chauf- 
feurs, and  gasoline.  The  American  Red  Cross 
augmented  this  service,  doubtless.  But  its 
chief  contribution  to  the  Friends  has  been  that 
of  medical  relief.  The  English  Friends  had 
already  established  one  maternity  hospital, 
one  children's  hospital,  three  convalescent 
homes,  and  district  nursing.  In  conjunction 
with  the  Children's  Bureau  and  later  with  the 
Medical  Department,  the  American  Red  Cross 
has  strengthened  all  this  work  by  the  loan  of 
doctors,  and  by  the  increased  funds  available. 
Two  of  the  most  important  additions  were 
dental  clinics  and  a  surgical  hospital. 

The  latter,  beginning  with  a  semi-disman- 
tled country  house  at  Sermaize,  grew  into  a 
plant  accommodating  sixty  patients,  with  its 
own  electric  lighting,  its  baths,  its  white  oper- 
ating room,  and  its  clean  wards.  Thirty 
nurses  and  nurses'  aids  cared  for  the  patients, 
who  came  from  a  radius  of  thirty  miles  around. 
They  were  not  charity  patients,  by  any 


168  Helping  France 

(i 

means;  one  might  be  the  wife  of  a  French 
colonel,  another  the  daughter  of  a  sous-pr6fet, 
and  others  the  wives  and  the  children  of  the 
soldiers  or  the  aged  parents  they  had  left. 
There  was  absolutely  no  other  surgeon  in  the 
district,  no  other  civilian  hospital.  All  were 
treated  free  of  charge. 

Except  for  the  warehouse  of  the  Red  Cross 
established  at  Chalons  in  April,  1918,  and  for 
the  regular  relief  work  of  the  department, 
there  were,  up  to  the  time  of  the  armistice,  no 
other  considerable  agencies  working  on  the 
spot  in  the  Marne.  There  was,  however,  one 
that  is  interesting  because  it  represents  the 
Protestants  of  France,  under  the  name  of  the 
Comit6  Protestant  d'Entr'Aide.  In  the  ham- 
let of  Heiltz-le-Maurupt,  on  the  Marne  battle 
line,  was  a  Protestant  church  and  in  the  vil- 
lage were  thirty  families  of  that  faith,  descend- 
ants of  the  Huguenots,  who  lost  all  they  pos- 
sessed. The  Friends  put  up  in  this  village  the 
shelters  for  which  the  Entr'Aide  supplied  the 
furnishings.  In  like  manner,  the  Friends 


The  Road  to  Verdun         169 

have  used  the  supplies  of  the  Bon  Gite  and 
the  Renaissance  du  Foyer. 

It  would  be  extremely  interesting  to  take  up 
in  detail  the  cooperation  of  our  warehouse  at 
Chalons  with  the  prefecture  of  the  Marne. 
Like  Amiens,  Chalons  is  a  gateway  for  refu- 
gees, and,  as  at  Amiens,  a  careful  plan  has 
been  worked  out  for  their  relief.  In  so  far 
as  this  plan  supplements  the  relief  work  of  the 
Friends  and  of  the  Red  Cross,  it  has  a  place 
here.  The  plan  is  that  of  M.  Nicaud,  depart- 
mental inspector  of  public  assistance,  and 
embraces  both  transient  refugees  and  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Marne  who  are  in  straits 
owing  to  the  war.  M.  Nicaud  acts  for  the 
Departmental  Commission  called  into  being 
by  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  in  August, 
1917.  He  is  responsible  to  the  pre*fet  of  the 
Marne.  Like  so  many  of  the  departmental 
officials  of  France  he  is  not  a  native  of  the 
department  himself,  but  was  appointed  only 
a  year  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  In  the 
room  adjoining  his  office,  the  walls  are  lined 


iyo  Helping  France 

with  open  files.  Here  are  the  records  of  the 
6prouves  (sufferers),  it  may  be  from  Belgium, 
from  the  Nord,  or  from  the  Marne  itself. 
They  represent  requests  for  aid,  investigations 
by  the  mayor  of  the  commune  in  which  the 
applicant  resides,  and  the  amount  of  aid  given. 
Up  to  the  20th  of  November,  1918,  28,922 
families  or  83,000  persons  had  been  given 
assistance.  But  this  assistance  is  not  given, 
except  in  the  case  of  non-residents,  in  cash. 
M.  Nicaud — like  most  of  the  French  offi- 
cials— is  a  firm  believer  in  preserving  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  recipient.  The  latter  is  pre- 
sented with  an  order  for  the  amount  covering 
his  immediate  needs,  redeemable  at  his  own 
local  merchant's,  or  at  a  depot  established  by 
the  State.  Into  this  scheme  of  relief,  both 
the  American  Red  Cross  and  the  Friends  have 
come  tentatively,  the  Red  Cross  having 
donated  a  monthly  stipend  and  large  supplies, 
and  the  Friends,  under  the  prefecture,  having 
established  a  distributing  depot  of  these  sup- 
plies at  Chalons  against  the  orders  of  M.  Ni- 


The  Road  to  Verdun         171 

caud.  Naturally,  however,  the  subsidies  for 
the  prefectorial  plan  come  largely  from  the 
government,  and  as  yet  private  agencies  in  the 
Marne  have  not  worked  out  the  complete 
coordination  with  the  prefecture  which  M. 
Nicaud  hopes  to  effect. 

The  Meuse  adjoins  the  Marne  without 
natural  barriers.  One  of  the  English  Friends 
describes  it  as  "comparatively  poor  and 
almost  entirely  agricultural.  The  men  having 
been  drawn  away  by  the  war,  there  is  no 
one  left  to  think  for  them.  The  depres- 
sion in  these  villages  is  very  pitiful."  This 
was  in  1915.  In  1916,  the  Meuse,  quiescent 
since  the  onslaught  of  1914,  sprang  into  ter- 
rible glory,  in  the  defense  of  Verdun.  While 
the  cannon  of  Fort  Vaux  and  Fort  Douau- 
mont  thundered,  while  overhead  the  German 
shells  and  bombs  were  being  hurled,  village 
women  by  the  roadside  broke  stone  to  keep  in 
repair  the  vital  road  that  night  and  day  fed 
the  defense.  On  that  road  depended  Verdun, 
cut  off  from  all  other  means  of  communica- 


172  Helping  France 

tion,  and  on  Verdun,  hung  France.  Fifteen 
miles,  at  one  time,  was  the  narrow  space  that 
separated  the  German  armies  on  either  side  of 
the  road.  Thousands  of  lives  were  poured  out 
to  save  it. 

There,  among  the  heroic  villages,  another 
organization  beside  the  Friends  came  in 
October,  1916, — the  Villages  Libe*re*s.  It  es- 
tablished an  outpost  in  charge  of  a  nurse, 
Mile.  Sirodot,  who  was  for  many  years  inter- 
ested in  an  orphanage  in  Brittany.  The  little 
center  grew;  two  other  volunteers  came  to  act 
as  nurses,  and  by  the  autumn  of  1918,  there 
were  sixty  villages  all  up  and  down  the  road 
in  their  care.  Not  only  nursing,  but  material 
aid  was  given,  though  here  again  the  Vil- 
lages Libe"r6s  put  into  practice  their  convic- 
tion that  the  recipients  should  pay  something, 
be  it  ever  so  little,  for  the  objects  accorded 
them.  The  greatest  need  of  the  two  ladies 
in  charge  of  the  district  was  transportation, 
and  this,  with  a  chauffeur,  the  Red  Cross 
supplied.  They  also  gave  liberally  of  their 


The  Road  to  Verdun         173 

stores  and  for  some  time  had  their  civilian 
headquarters  in  the  grounds  of  the  chateau 
which  served  as  headquarters  for  the  Villages 
Libe*re*s  also  at  Rosnes. 

With  the  Villages  Liberes,  and  later  with  the 
Children's  Bureau  of  the  Red  Cross,  worked 
also  a  group  of  the  American  Fund  for  French 
Wounded,  establishing  dispensaries  for  the 
civilians.  But,  like  the  Red  Cross  itself,  it 
quickly  turned  to  the  care  of  our  own  wounded 
in  the  terrible  fighting  of  the  Argonne. 

The  road  to  Verdun!  There  might  honk 
the  gray  Ford  of  the  Friend's  Unit,  unabashed; 
there  through  the  mud  walked  the  ladies  of 
the  Villages  Libe"res,  in  their  blue  uniforms  and 
white  banded,  floating  veils;  there  crashed 
and  rumbled  the  French  army  camions,  hun- 
dreds of  them,  driven  by  slant-eyed  Anna- 
mites;  there  at  a  crossroad  stood  the  Yankee 
M.  P.,  holding  up  traffic  at  its  peril;  there  the 
soldiers  of  the  world,  it  seemed,  marched  by. 
Our  ambulance  boys,  all  during  the  siege  of 
1916,  flashed  up  and  down  it,  our  troops  in 


174  Helping  France 

khaki  have  traveled  it;  our  dead  are  laid  to 
rest  on  the  hillsides  that  overlook  it,  winding 
up  to  Verdun. 

But  that  was  before  the  armistice.  On  the 
night  of  November  11,  1918,  the  moon,  no 
longer  a  Boche  moon,  shone  on  the  long  white 
road  and  on  the  shattered  villages.  For  the 
first  time  in  four  years  they  twinkled  with 
lights. 


Market  at  Montrejeau  (Comminges). 


Reflexions  et  Croquis  aur  I' Architecture  ou  Pays  de  France:   Georges  Wybo. 
Haehette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 


THE  PREFECT  OF  THE  FRONTIER 

BOUNDING  the  Meuse  on  the  northeast, 
a  buffer  between  the  French  fortress  of 
Verdun  and  the  German  fortress  of  Metz,  lies 
the  Department  of  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle, 
anciently  known  as  Lorraine.  From  the  time 
of  the  Romans,  when  these  marches  were 
peopled  by  tribes  of  the  Belgae,  this  has  been 
a  turbulent  frontier.  Here  in  the  ninth  cen- 
tury, as  in  the  nineteenth,  were  fought  the 
battle  against  German  aggression  which  de- 

175 


176  Helping  France 

termined  the  existence  of  France  as  a  nation, 
cemented  by  the  treaty  of  Verdun.  So  ancient 
has  been  the  formal  feud  between  the  two 
races.  Civil  wars  have  engaged  the  province, 
in  which  figure  the  Bishops  of  Toul,  the  Dukes 
of  Lorraine  and  of  Bar,  and  that  arch-enemy 
of  all  feudal  princes,  the  King — whoever  he 
might  be — of  France.  Margaret  of  Anjou, 
Queen  of  England  in  the  wars  of  the  Roses, 
was  born  at  Pont-a-Mousson,  the  ruins  of 
which  were  held  at  the  time  of  the  armistice 
by  Southern  colored  troops.  Nomeny,  the 
proud  seat  of  Lorraine,  was  the  birthplace  of 
another  princess  who  became  a  queen  of 
France.  To-day  Nomeny  is  one  of  the  thou- 
sands of  villages  wantonly  destroyed  by  Ger- 
many. But  in  spite  of  royal  alliances,  Lor- 
raine itself  never  came  under  the  crown  of 
France  until  a  few  years  before  the  French 
revolution.  Nor  had  she  been  long  a  state  of 
the  Empire,  when  she  was  cut  in  two,  and  her 
northern  half  ceded,  in  1872,  to  Germany. 
North  of  the  Moselle,  converted  into  an  ever- 


The  Prefect  of  the  Frontier    177 

present  menace  at  Strasbourg  and  Metz,  lay 
the  lost  provinces  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  Meurthe  and 
Moselle  can  boast  many  an  admiral  and  mar- 
shal of  France.  At  Toul  and  at  Nancy  were 
situated  those  military  schools  which  trained 
year  after  year  the  picked  troops  of  the 
Division  of  Iron,  the  men  who,  relying  on  the 
inviolable  neutrality  of  Belgium,  thought  to 
withstand  between  Verdun  and  Belfort  the 
first  assaults  of  their  ancient  enemy,  Ger- 
many. As  a  matter  of  fact  they  did  so  with- 
stand them  in  the  fall  of  1914.  But  the  glory 
of  that  victory  was  swallowed  up  in  the  greater 
glory  of  the  Marne. 

As  the  German  troops  swept  ever  nearer 
through  Nomeny  to  the  west,  and  through 
LuneVille  and  GerbeVillers  to  the  east,  Nancy 
knew  that  her  fate  in  the  combined  attack 
rested  on  the  semicircle  of  wooded  hills  about 
her  known  as  Le  Grand  Couronne*  de  Nancy 
(the  Great  Crown  of  Nancy)  and  held  by  her 
troops.  It  is  told  how  the  artillery  on  one  of 


178  Helping  France 

these  heights  fell  short  of  ammunition.  The 
guns  fired  their  last  shot;  the  Germans  were 
advancing.  Nothing  remained  but  to  destroy 
the  guns  and  retreat.  The  order  was  given. 
The  crew  of  one  gun  received  it  with  tears  in 
their  eyes.  "My  captain,"  they  said,  "Our 
gun  has  been  a  good  gun.  Before  we  destroy 
it,  may  we  not  decorate  it?"  The  captain 
assented.  The  soldiers  gathered  flowers  from 
the  fields  and  branches  from  the  woods;  they 
made  a  flowery  chariot  of  their  well-loved 
companion  in  arms,  the  gun.  But  the  captain 
stood  watching  the  enemy,  field  glass  to  eye. 
Suddenly  he  saw  the  advancing  columns 
wheel,  turn  and  file  away.  He  waited,  still 
watching.  Then  the  truth  dawned  on  him. 
"The  Germans  are  falling  back,"  he  cried, 
"the  battle  is  won."  Such  is  the  legend  of  the 
gun  that  saved  Nancy,  as  beautiful  a  legend 
as  those  King  Stanislas  caused  to  be  wrought 
in  the  city's  golden  gates. 

In  the  city  itself,  during  these  terrible  days, 
there  was  a  spirit  as  unconscious,  as  heroic, 


Church  of  Flirey,  Meurtke-Mosette. 


The  Prefect  of  the  Frontier    179 

as  that  of  its  defenders.  It  was  due  in  a 
great  measure  to  the  new  preset  who  had  come 
to  Nancy  only  a  month  before.  M.  Le*on 
Mirman  had  been  successively  professor  of 
mathematics  at  the  Lyceum  of  Reims,  deputy, 
and  director  of  public  aid  in  the  Ministry  of 
the  Interior.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  he 
had  asked  to  be  sent  to  a  point  of  danger. 
The  department  of  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle 
was  given  to  him.  He  came  to  Nancy  with 
his  wife  and  his  family,  saying  to  his  new 
neighbors  in  his  first  proclamation:  "I  bring 
you  that  which,  next  to  my  country,  I  cherish 
most,  my  wife  and  my  six  children  who  will 
be  proud  to  share  your  trials,  to  toil  with  you 
in  your  labors,  and  to  unite  themselves  to 
your  hope." 

From  the  summer  of  1914  to  the  summer  of 
1918,  Nancy  suffered  bombardment  every 
month,  sometimes  every  week,  and  during  the 
full  moons — for  the  felon  aviators  of  Germany 
preferred  its  light — night  after  night.  It 
shares  with  Dunkerque  and  Reims  the  dis- 


180  Helping  France 

tinction  of  being  the  most  bombed  city  of 
France.  Not  only  was  the  city  bombed,  but 
the  surrounding  country,  until  Nancy  was 
full  of  refugees.  At  the  head  of  the  committee 
to  care  for  them  was,  of  course,  the  Pre*fet, 
and  on  it  served  the  Mayor  and  the  Bishop  of 
Nancy.  An  asylum  for  these  unfortunates 
was  fitted  up,  and  divided  into  corridors,  each 
bearing  the  name  of  the  village  of  the  refugees. 
Trade  schools  were  opened  for  the  children. 
Industries  were  fostered.  Huge  underground 
refuges  were  built.  Mme.  Mirman  and  her 
older  daughters  were  no  less  keen  to  help 
than  the  Preset.  In  fact  the  trade  school  was 
Mme.  Mirman's  particular  charge. 

When  the  English  Friends,  so  near  the 
scene  of  these  continued  disasters,  inquired 
in  1915  what  they  could  do  to  help,  they  were 
met  by  the  courteous  reply  that  Nancy,  being 
a  very  wealthy  city,  was  proud  to  take  care  of 
its  own.  Nevertheless,  they  had  for  a  time  a 
relief  station  there.  In  the  summer  of  1917, 
however,  there  came  a  plea  in  the  form  of  a 


The  Prefect  of  the  Frontier    181 

telegram  from  M.  Mirman  himself  to  the 
American  Fund  for  French  Wounded,  asking 
help  for  four  hundred  and  fifty  children, 
evacuated  from  neighboring  villages  on  ac- 
count of  the  German  gas  attacks.  These 
children,  ranging  from  one  year  to  nine,  were 
too  young  to  wear  gas  masks.  They  were 
without  fathers,  because  the  fathers  had  been 
mobilized.  They  were  without  mothers,  be- 
cause the  mothers  must  remain  at  their  posts 
of  danger  to  cultivate  the  fields. 

The  American  Red  Cross,  as  Mrs.  Lathrop 
of  the  American  Fund  for  French  Wounded 
knew,  was  looking  for  work.  She  herself 
could  supply  the  nurses,  the  transportation, 
and  the  medical  supplies,  but  not  the  doctor. 
She  laid  the  case  before  the  American  Red 
Cross.  As  a  result,  the  Children's  Bureau  of  the 
latter  started  the  next  day  the  first  Red  Cross 
work  for  civilians  in  France.  The  asylum  it- 
self was  a  former  military  barracks  of  ten  build- 
ings capable  of  housing  eight  hundred  patients, 
situated  on  a  hill  a  mile  from  the  old,  walled 


182  Helping  France 

city  of  Toul.  The  prefecture  and  the  army, 
cooperating,  gave  the  light,  the  coal,  the  water 
supply,  food,  domestic  labor  and  a  squad  of 
soldiers,  beds  and  bedding  and  transportation 
of  supplies.  The  Red  Cross  supplemented 
this  help  with  a  unit  of  six  American  Friends 
to  install  sanitary  equipment,  with  milk  and 
delicacies  for  the  children,  games  and,  above 
all,  a  doctor,  a  dentist  and  a  director  of  play. 
At  Toul  then  began  the  active  cooperation 
between  the  American  Red  Cross  and  the 
American  Fund  for  French  Wounded  which 
continued  until  January,  1919.  From  Toul 
their  work  spread,  until  there  were  twenty-six 
dispensaries  for  children  opened  under  the 
Red  Cross  director  designated  Directeur  des 
Secours  Civils  aux  Enfants  for  the  department 
of  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle. 

But  the  story  of  the  dispensaries  in  the 
Meurthe  and  Moselle  as  a  whole  belongs  to 
the  Children's  Bureau,  which,  in  the  Zone 
reorganization  of  the  Red  Cross,  passed  from 
the  Department  of  General  Relief  to  the 


The  Prefect  of  the  Frontier    183 

Medical  Department.  It  belongs  not  so  much 
to  an  area  of  devastation  as  to  one  over- 
strained by  the  necessity  of  the  war  produc- 
tion, not  only  of  food,  but  of  ammunition. 
Gas  attacks,  bombs,  the  shortage  of  labor 
which  caused  women  to  take  the  places  of  men 
in  industry,  the  overcrowding  of  refugees, 
these  were  the  conditions  alleviated  by  the 
Children's  Bureau  in  its  refuge  at  Toul,  in  its 
city  dispensaries  and  its  hospitals  and  creches 
established  in  connection  with  munition  plants 
such  as  Foug.  True,  there  was  the  ruined 
city  of  Luneville,  there  was  Gerbevillers,  which 
will  ever  be  famous  for  Sceur  Julie  and  her 
wounded,  there  was  Pont-a-Mousson,  where 
even  last  summer  the  nurses  who  served  the 
dispensary  ran  across  the  bridge  in  single  file 
so  as  not  to  be  picked  off  by  the  German  gun- 
ners, there  was  Pompey,  with  its  wrecked  and 
silent  factories,  and  a  dozen  more  that  one 
might  name.  Nevertheless,  the  work  of  the 
American  Red  Cross  was  primarily  one  of 
public  health,  supplementing  M.  Mirman 


184  Helping  France 

in  his  programme  of  economic  administra- 
tion. 

In  like  manner,  the  American  Red  Cross 
warehouse  and  transportation  service,  opened 
in  January,  1918,  was  designed  to  meet  the 
emergent  needs  of  the  refugees  flocking  into 
Nancy,  to  stock  the  soup  kitchens,  to  dis- 
burse supplies  for  war  orphans  or  for  poor 
relief,  and  to  furnish  men  and  transport  for  the 
all  too-frequent  emergencies  of  bombardment. 
Ambulance  service,  the  evacuation  of  the 
maternity  hospital  of  Nancy  to  Toul,  and 
finally,  their  share  in  the  wholesale  evacuation 
of  Nancy  itself  resulting  from  ever  fiercer  air 
raids  in  February  and  March,  1918,  such  were 
the  emergent  tasks  which  fell  to  the  Red  Cross 
personnel. 

Meantime  at  the  Prefecture,  three  broad 
lines  of  service  were  perfected;  (1)  the  care  of 
refugees  already  noted,  (2)  the  encourage- 
ment of  agriculture,  with  attendant  recon- 
struction, (3)  and,  above  all,  by  all  these 
means  the  encouragement  of  the  people  whom 


The  Prefect  of  the  Frontier    185 

M.  Mirman  had  come  to  govern.  In  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  greater  part  of  his  depart- 
ment was  uninvaded,  it  had  lost  to  the  Ger- 
mans the  main  source  of  its  industry  in  losing 
the  Basin  of  Briey.  There  were  the  iron 
mines  which  had  supplied  its  foundries,  the 
most  considerable  in  France.  In  like  manner 
it  had  lost  its  deposits  of  salt  and  of  potash. 
Its  industries  were  further  dislocated  by  lack 
of  coal  usually  imported  through  Germany. 
It  was  cut  off  from  the  west  of  France  by  the 
loop  of  German  armies  almost  surrounding 
Verdun.  The  front,  with  all  its  horrors  of 
wounded,  its  gas  attacks,  its  constant  anxie- 
ties, lay  not  fifteen  miles  from  the  capital, 
which  was  subjected  to  both  bombardment 
and  raids.  And  from  the  front,  far  into  the 
interior,  over  peaceful  fields  and  vineyards, 
over  open  cities,  over  munitions  factories,  or 
over  rail  heads  as  the  case  might  be,  the  air 
squadrons  of  the  Germans  dropped  impar- 
tially their  bombs. 

Yet    under    these    terrible    conditions    the 


i86  Helping  France 

munitions  of  war  must  be  forged.  That  the 
women  may  till  the  fields,  the  children  must 
be  placed  in  safety.  "The  tiller  of  the  soil,  in 
laboring  for  the  communes  labors  also  for 
France."  "The  victory  does  not  depend 
solely  on  military  action;  the  civilians  must 
strive  on  their  part  to  guard  against  the 
economic  disasters  of  which  the  war  is  the 
cause."  "French  valor  should  affirm  itself 
in  work,  as  it  does  in  arms."*  Such  were  the 
appeals  which  M.  Mirman  addressed  to  his 
fellow  citizens.  But  he  gave  them  more  than 
words;  he  distributed  seeds  in  the  devastated 
communes,  and  built  and  repaired  hundreds 
of  houses  in  the  one  hundred  and  thirty-four 
communes  retrieved  from  the  Germans.  He 
loved  the  refugees,  particularly  the  children. 
These  latter  do  not  all  belong  by  any  means  to 
his  asylums,  in  Nancy  or  in  Toul.  At  Pom- 
pey,  in  all  the  towns  lying  at  the  mouth  of 
the  mines,  the  foundries  of  peace  times  turned 
to  the  manufactures  of  war.  Night  and  day 

*  F61ix  Rocquain:  Uu  Grand  Pr6fet.    La  Revue  Hebdomadaire. 


The  Prefect  of  the  Frontier    187 

they  ran,  and  the  tall  chimneys  belching  fire 
were  a  flaunting  target  for  German  bombs. 
So  it  came  about  that  the  poor  houses  left  in 
these  villages  stood  empty,  and  every  night  a 
sad  procession  moved  down  to  some  unworked 
shaft,  to  spend  the  night  in  its  shelter.  And 
this  went  on,  not  for  a  week,  or  a  month,  or  a 
year,  but  in  some  cases  for  four  years.  Chil- 
dren were  born  and  lived  and  died — for  the 
mortality  was  high — without  knowing  any 
other  home. 

Such  children  as  these  were  reached  by  the 
American  Red  Cross  and  the  American  Fund 
for  French  Wounded  dispensaries;  bright  chil- 
dren, pathetic  children,  oftentimes  war-or- 
phaned children  whom  kind  neighbors  took  in. 
And  it  was  the  care  of  the  children  that 
touched  as  nothing  else  could,  M.  Mirman's 
heart.  Just  as  he  had  entrusted  his  own 
children  to  the  protection  of  the  French  army, 
he  entrusted  these  other  children  of  his  larger 
family  to  the  American  Red  Cross. 

War  is  a  wastrel.     In  the  spring  of  1918,  the 


i88  Helping  France 

refugee  work  at  Nancy  was  swept  away.  By 
order  of  the  array,  Nancy  was  evacuated  of  all 
her  useless  and  alien  population.  The  refu- 
gees had  to  leave  the  community  center  where 
they  had  experienced  so  much  of  kindness  and 
of  practical  encouragement.  Later,  a  second 
blow  fell  on  M.  Mirman  in  a  second  evacua- 
tion, that  of  the  asylum  at  Toul.  Not  the 
enemy,  but  the  latest  of  their  Allies,  caused 
this  unexpected  result.  Our  army,  coming 
into  the  firing  line  in  Lorraine,  took  the  chil- 
dren's asylum  as  a  hospital.  The  denouement 
was  sudden  and  unexpected.  M.  Mirman, 
who  had  gone  himself  to  the  mothers  of  these 
children  to  assure  them  that  he  would  be  per- 
sonally responsible  for  them,  had  no  time  to 
gain  their  consent  to  a  second  removal.  He 
assumed  the  responsibility,  and  sent  them, 
as  he  had  the  first  convoys,  on  a  special  train 
to  a  place  of  safety  outside  the  fighting 
zone. 

But  the  dispensaries,  the  hospitals  and  the 
creches,  attached  to  the  factory  centers,  and 


The  Prefect  of  the  Frontier    189 

the  Nancy  warehouse  continued  to  extend 
help  to  the  civilians  of  the  Meurthe  and 
Moselle.  The  aerial  bombardments,  increas- 
ing up  to  the  time  of  the  armistice,  made  this 
service  of  exceptional  value.  The  preparation 
for  the  great  offensive  against  Metz,  to  have 
been  launched  by  us  and  by  the  French,  on 
November  llth,  on  the  other  hand,  made  it 
increasingly  difficult.  Wholesale  evacuations 
from  the  zone  of  operation  to  the  north  of 
Nancy  added  to  the  stream  of  refugees  de- 
parting from  the  city  itself.  It  was  the  aim 
of  the  prefecture  to  outfit  each  of  these  refu- 
gees with  clothing  and  with  food  for  the  jour- 
ney. The  resources  of  the  Nancy  warehouse 
were  placed  at  the  disposal  of  Mme.  Mirman 
and  a  committee  of  charitable  ladies,  for  this 
end,  as  well  as  for  all  the  wartime  charities 
which  they  directed.  Mme.  Massiet,  wife 
of  General  Massiet,  writes  of  this:  "the 
assistance  in  food  and  clothing  in  these  days 
of  restricted  supplies  and  expensive  living 
has  rendered  us  a  service  the  importance  of 


190  Helping  France 

which    is    above    anything    which    we    can 
express." 

On  the  heights  of  Chateau-Thierry, 
before  the  St.  Mihiel  salient,  in  the  Argonne 
Forest,  and  on  the  front  of  Nancy,  which  com- 
manded Metz,  the  American  Army  was  given 
by  the  French  its  posts  of  honor.  In  Lorraine 
fell  the  first  of  our  army  for  France.  The  de- 
partment of  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle  has 
commemorated  their  sacrifice  by  a  monument 
emblazoned  with  the  double  cross  of  Lorraine. 
Our  men  of  that  advance  division  wear  the 
emblem  of  Lorraine  upon  their  shoulders. 
No  less  precious  a  symbol  of  the  entente  cor- 
diale,  of  appreciation  of  American  effort,  will 
rise  in  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle,  in  commem- 
oration of  the  American  Red  Cross.  It  will 
be  a  living  memorial,  a  trade  school,  founded 
by  M.  Mirman  from  money  given  him  by  the 
Red  Cross  to  use  in  any  way  he  saw  fit,  for 
the  children  of  Lorraine. 


Saint  Cyr  (near  Dourdan). 

Reflexions  et  Croquis  sur  I' Architecture  au  Pays  de  France:   Georges  Wybo. 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  Paris. 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE    FLAGS    OF    VICTORY 

T  yf  7ITH  the  proclaiming  of  the  armistice,  on 
*  *  November  11, 1918,  the  second  phase  of 
the  effort  of  the  American  Red  Cross  for  civil- 
ians drew  to  an  end.  The  merging  of  the 
military  and  civilian  branches  made  necessary 
at  the  time  of  the  retreat,  and  perfected  in  the 
system  of  Zone  management  during  the  stu- 
pendous Allied  offensive  of  the  early  autumn, 

191 


192  Helping  France 

suddenly  lost  its  reason  for  being.  The  con- 
centration of  supplies,  of  energy,  of  purpose 
in  the  soldier,  and  particularly  in  the  Amer- 
ican soldier,  relaxed.  The  husbanding  of 
resources  against  a  winter  in  the  trenches,  the 
restrictions  placed  upon  civilian  buying,  the 
measuring  of  tonnage  by  the  needs  of  the 
army,  the  impossibility  of  constructive  plan- 
ning, all  these  uncertainties  vanished  over- 
night. 

In  their  place  was  presented  a  problem 
quite  as  stupendous :  the  devastation  and  the 
refugee.  "In  the  steeples  of  the  liberated 
villages,"  writes  Eduard  Helsey  in  Le  Jour- 
nal, January  2,  1919,  "the  flags  of  victory  are 
commencing  to  be  displayed.  To  the  first 
rejoicing  has  succeeded  little  by  little  a  joy 
more  thoughtful  which  forces  consideration 
of  the  actual  realities.  It  is  not  sufficient 
to  be  victorious,  it  is  also  necessary  to  live. 

"In  the  regions  devastated  by  the  enemy, 
there  is  for  our  unfortunate  compatriots  a 
problem  so  acute  as  to  border  on  tragedy. 


The  Flags  of  Victory         193 

"Before  stating  the  results  of  my  investi- 
gation as  to  the  sufferings  of  those  to  whom 
our  soldiers  have  given  their  freedom,  I  wish 
to  touch  upon  what  is  being  done  for  them. 

"We  must  state  the  simple  truth.  All  of 
those  upon  whom  falls  the  responsibility  of 
dealing  with  this  situation  have  a  keen 
understanding  of  then-  duty,  so  clear  and  so 
imperative.  The  minister  hi  charge,  M.  Le- 
brun,  his  assistants,  the  heads  of  departments, 
the  presets,  the  generous  people  organized 
into  societies  to  render  assistance — every  one 
is  working  without  sparing  himself.  Every 
one  is  putting  his  whole  heart  and  soul  into 
this  effort.  But  the  enormity  of  the  task  sur- 
passes the  capacity  of  the  best  intentions; 
and  those  who  are  devoting  themselves  to  this 
work  of  rehabilitation  of  the  devastated 
regions,  are  the  first  to  recognize  and  to  pro- 
claim that  the  needs  are  out  of  all  propor- 
tion to  the  results  obtained. 

"Think  that  in  the  single  department  of  the 
Nord,  so  completely  'sabotaged*  by  the  war, 


194  Helping  France 

it  is  necessary  to  provide  the  means  of  life  for 
1,200,000  inhabitants!  And  this  figure  does 
not  cease  to  mount.  Every  day  from  3000 
to  5000  exiles  are  returning.  A  great  num- 
ber are  returning  through  Valenciennes,  arriv- 
ing from  Belgium  or  Germany,  to  which  coun- 
tries they  had  been  deported.  In  this  single 
department  of  the  Nord  can  be  counted 
fifty-seven  communes  (among  which  are  sev- 
eral large  cities),  and  of  these  40  per  cent  of 
all  the  real  property  has  been  destroyed.  In 
thirty-two  of  these  communes  from  40  to  90 
per  cent  of  the  houses  have  been  shattered  by 
cannon,  and  in  fifty-nine  communes  not  one 
building  in  ten  is  standing.  To  sum  up,  half 
of  the  department  is  uninhabitable,  and  the 
rest  has  been  totally  laid  bare.  At  Cambrai, 
Douai,  and  at  Valenciennes,  there  was  no 
longer  when  the  Germans  left,  linen,  bedding, 
cooking  nor  other  utensils.  There  was  noth- 
ing. 

''  There  is  no  one  to  blame  for  tne  present 
situation  but  the   Germans.     Yes.     But  we 


Telegraph  Corps  Putting  up  Wires,  Noyon. 

Apres   le  Recul   Allemand,  Mars  1917.  Noyon,  Guiscard,  Ham:    Armand 
Gueritte.     Vernant  &  Dolle,  Imprimeurs,  Paris. 


The  Flags  of  Victory         195 

are  now  in  the  winter  season  and  during  this 
temporary  period  from  which  there  is  no 
escape,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  French,  who 
have  already  suffered  the  anguish  and  torture 
of  the  Boche  oppression,  are  still  suffering 
cruelly.  This  is  because  it  is  much  easier  to 
destroy  than  to  rebuild,  and  peace  does  not, 
any  more  than  war,  take  place  in  a  day. 

"Two  or  three  million  poor  people  are  living 
in  these  liberated  regions,  either  because  they 
did  not  wish  to  flee  before  the  invader  or  be- 
cause they  have  again  returned  to  their  homes 
at  the  earliest  opportunity.  There  is  actually 
nothing  more  urgent  for  France  than  to  assure 
these  people  the  means  to  live. 

"What  are  they  doing?  What  are  they 
eating?  How  are  they  dressed?  WTiere  are 
they  sleeping?  How  are  they  spending  their 
days  and  their  nights?  What  do  they  need? 

"It  was  to  investigate  at  first  hand,  to 
register  the  exact  facts  that  I  undertook  a 
tour  through  the  martyred  towns,  through 
the  great  cities  so  long  shut  out  from  French 


196  Helping  France 

life,  through  the  villages  laid  waste,  where  I 
have  seen  our  soldiers  fight. 

"Haubourdin,  Halluin,  Gondecourt,  Creve- 
coeur,  Courcelettes,  P6ronne,  Bapaume,  these 
are  names  of  combats  and  of  victories.  It 
is  necessary  to-day  to  give  new  and  peaceful 
battles  against  misery  and  hunger." 

There  remained  to  be  determined  the  rela- 
tion of  the  American  Red  Cross  to  this  appall- 
ing situation.  It  called  for  emergency  action 
quick  and  far  reaching  to  be  effective.  But 
that  very  fact  necessitated  the  closest  cooper- 
ation of  the  American  Red  Cross  with  the 
Government  on  whom  must  fall  not  only  the 
crushing  need  of  the  moment,  but  the  plan 
for  the  economic  reconstruction  of  the  six 
thousand  square  miles  of  devastated  France. 
Plans  of  reconstruction  and  of  agriculture, 
worked  out  by  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
the  days  when  the  German  retreat  was  looked 
on  as  a  gradual  process,  assumed  insignificant 
proportions  in  the  face  of  the  sudden  libera- 
tion of  the  entire  occupied  territory.  Cities 


The  Flags  of  Victory         197 

reduced  to  rubble,  miles  of  soil  empoisoned 
by  gas,  planted  with  shells  and  barbed  wire, 
blasted  as  by  a  volcanic  eruption, — this  was 
the  concern  of  governments.  Above  all, 
France  felt,  it  was  the  concern  of  Germany. 
As  a  French  soldier  said  on  viewing  the  devas- 
tation reconquered,  "After  all,  only  the 
ruins  are  German,  the  soil  is  French!"  The 
ruins  are  German,,  and  she  will  pay. 

While  these  matters  on  which  hang  peace 
or  war  are  being  discussed  by  the  envoys  of  all 
the  world,  the  American  Red  Cross  has  set 
itself  to  carry  out  the  duty,  assigned  it  by  the 
French  government,  of  emergent  relief.  It  is 
doing  this,  not  in  its  own  way,  but  in  the  way 
approved  and  determined  by  that  govern- 
ment. This  is,  so  far  as  the  main  plan  is  con- 
cerned, a  return  to  the  warehouse  scheme  of 
the  Belgian  Relief  Commission.  Six  huge 
warehouses  have  been  established  in  Northern 
France;  one  at  Verdun,  one  at  Chalons,  one 
at  Me'zieres,  one  at  Laon,  one  at  Amiens,  and 
one  at  Lille.  Each  serves  a  defined  area; 


198  Helping  France 

that  of  Verdun  the  Meuse,  the  Meurthe  and 
Moselle,  and  the  Vosges,  that  of  Chalons  the 
Marne,  that  of  Me*zieres  the  Ardennes,  that  of 
Laon  the  Aisne,  that  of  Amiens  the  Somme  and 
the  Oise,  tfiat  of  Lille  the  Nord  and  the  Pas- 
de-Calais.  They  have  each  a  delegate,  a 
staff,  and  above  all,  a  strong  transport  ser- 
vice; for  in  the  devastated  area  proper  rail- 
roads no  longer  exist,  nor  tramways,  nor 
busses,  nor  conveyances  of  any  kind — it  might 
almost  be  said,  nor  roads.  The  delegates  of 
these  warehouses  are  responsible  to  a  Field 
Director,  whose  central  office  is  in  Paris,  and 
he,  in  turn,  is  responsible  to  the  Director  of 
General  Relief.  The  capacity  of  the  ware- 
houses, and  the  volume  of  work  contem- 
plated, may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that  the 
first  consignment  shipped  to  Lille  comprised 
one  hundred  carloads.  Fortunately  army  sup- 
plies and  refugee  supplies  stored  in  the  interior 
could  be  systematically  diverted  to  this  use. 

There  was  already  operating  in  Northern 
France  another  intensely  American  agency, 


The  Flags  of  Victory         199 

the  Hoover  or  Belgian  Relief  Commission, 
latterly  called  the  Interallied  Food  Com- 
mission. From  Belgium  as  far  as  the  former 
German  lines,  they  had  their  old  territory 
divided  into  districts  and  committees,  cen- 
tering about  their  warehouses.  The  Inter- 
allied Food  Commission  and  the  American 
Red  Cross  have,  therefore,  combined  in  a 
working  agreement  whereby  the  American 
Red  Cross  warehouses  in  France  carry  no 
stock  of  food,  relying  on  the  stocks  of  the 
Commission  of  Relief  for  Belgium,  but  on  the 
other  hand  supplement  the  Food  Commission 
in  Belgium  proper  by  Red  Cross  warehouses 
stored  with  other  necessities.  Three  such 
warehouses  have  been  established  there. 

Meantime,  another  agency  has  been  in- 
vited by  the  French  authorities  into  the  situa- 
tion; the  Children's  Bureau  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  itself.  Dr.  A.  Calmette,  the  med- 
ical inspector  for  the  liberated  regions  of  the 
Service  de  Sante*,  sent  in  January  the  follow- 
ing appeal: 


200  Helping  France 

"In  the  cities  of  Northern  France  that  have 
been  devastated  by  the  German  armies,  the 
working  population  has  suffered  much  more 
than  the  country  people  from  insufficient  food. 
As  a  result  the  children,  especially  from  eight 
to  sixteen  years  old,  have  been  stunted  in 
their  growth. 

"Physicians  are  much  preoccupied  over  this 
condition  which  puts  the  coming  race  in 
jeopardy. 

"The  authorities  concentrating  all  their 
powers  on  economic  reconstruction  are  not 
now  in  a  position  to  recognize  all  the  im- 
portance of  this  question. 

"It  is  extremely  to  be  wished  that  the 
American  Red  Cross,  which  has  made  such 
generous  efforts  on  behalf  of  the  refugees  from 
the  invaded  districts,  should  see  its  way  to 
organizing  a  work  for  the-  relief  of  the  youth 
of  the  liberated  cities.  This  could  be  done 
by  establishing  school  canteens,  where  for  an 
entire  year  each  child  could  obtain  a  sub- 
stantial meal. 


The  Flags  of  Victory        201 

"The  cities  of  the  north  of  France  devas- 
tated or  destroyed  by  the  German  army,  call 
with  all  their  heart  on  the  American  Red 
Cross  for  their  assistance  and  beg  them  not  to 
abandon  them." 

In  accordance  with  this  all  too  evident  need, 
the  warehouse  plan  of  the  Red  Cross  was  mod- 
ified to  include  stores  of  supplementary  food 
for  children,  and  canteen  centers  are  in  process 
of  organization  by  the  Children's  Bureau  in 
connection  with  both  Red  Cross  and  Allied 
Food  Commission  warehouses.  Dispensaries 
are  not  deemed  necessary  on  account  of  the 
return  to  their  practices  of  mobilized  physi- 
cians, and  of  the  able  direction  of  the  Service 
de  Saute" .  In  fact,  nearly  all  the  Children's 
Bureau  dispensaries  which  have  heretofore 
worked  in  the  devastated  area  have  been 
closed  for  these  reasons. 

Besides  the  American  Red  Cross  and  the  In- 
terallied Food  Commission,  there  are  hundreds 
of  private  agencies  equipped  for  emergency 
relief  and  for  reconstruction,  which  are  already 


202  Helping  France 

in  the  field.  Of  American  organizations,  for 
instance,  all  those  who  had  posts  in  the  north 
prior  to  the  German  drive  have  returned.  In 
addition,  college  units  such  as  the  Barnard 
Unit  and  the  Vassar  Unit,  are  at  work,  one  in 
the  Nord,  and  the  other  at  Verdun;  and  it  is 
universally  true  that  units  which  in  war- 
time were  hospital  units,  have  taken  up 
emergent  relief.  The  organization  carrying 
the  largest  programme  is  that  of  the  Friends 
with  a  personnel  of  six  hundred.  The  next 
in  size  is  the  American  Committee  for  Devas- 
tated France  in  the  Aisne. 

There  are  British  organizations,  notably  the 
Comite  Brittanique  of  the  French  Red  Cross. 
There  are  the  host  of  French  agencies,  headed 
by  the  Comit6  du  Secours  National  and  the 
three  branches  of  the  French  Red  Cross. 
The  former  functions  as  usual,  for  the  most 
part  indirectly  by  subsidizing  departmental 
and  other  agencies ;  the  latter  has  an  extensive 
field  and  a  numerous  personnel  drawn  from  its 
nurses.  There  are  the  many  smaller  societies, 


The  Flags  of  Victory        203 

who  with  the  French  Red  Cross,  have  held  in 
reserve  their  energy  and  their  supplies  for 
just  this  moment  of  greatest  need.  The 
clothing  made  for  four  years  in  the  women's 
workrooms,  the  accumulated  furniture,  the 
kitchen  utensils, — all  are  being  distributed 
now.  There  are  the  owners  of  estates  who 
return  to  encourage  their  villagers,  their  hands 
full  of  gifts.  There  are  agricultural  societies 
such  as  the  Aide  Immediate  aux  Agriculteurs, 
whose  name  explains  its  purpose,  and  village 
planning  and  reconstruction  societies,  such 
as  the  Village  Reconstitue*,  and  the  Renais- 
sance des  Cites.  In  the  hands  of  the  latter, 
the  Red  Cross  has  placed  all  the  expert  studies 
on  the  problem  of  reconstruction  upon  which 
it  has  been  engaged  for  two  years. 

This  network  of  private  effort,  of  whatever 
nationality,  exists  with  the  authorization  and 
under  the  restriction  of  the  French  govern- 
ment. To  this  end  a  new  ministry  was  cre- 
ated last  autumn,  styled  the  Minis tere  du 
Blocus  et  des  Regions  Libe're'es.  As  in  war- 


204  Helping  France 

time  by  the  army,  so  now  by  the  ministry  the 
sectors  of  each  of  these  societies  are  given  out. 
Non-partisan  departmental  committees  and 
the  representative  of  the  ministry  in  each 
department  oversee  and  control  to  a  certain 
extent  the  private  activities  and  coordinate 
them  with  the  colossal  plans  of  the  govern- 
ment.* 

It  is  witn  special  departmental  committees 
that  the  American  Red  Cross  delegates  work. 
They  themselves  do  no  individual  family 
relief  work,  but  in  each  section  distribute 
through  an  agency  already  established,  and 
approved  by  the  aforesaid  committee,  at 
whose  head,  ex  officio,  is  the  pr£fet  him- 
self. 

The  warehousing  and  disbursing  plan  thus 
adopted  by  the  American  Red  Cross  has  cut 
off  automatically  not  only  its  own  direct  relief 
work,  but  special  services  and  subsidies  for- 
merly granted  by  the  Red  Cross  to  cooper- 
ating agencies,  such  as  the  American  Friends' 

*  See  Appendix. 


The  Flags  of  yictory         205 

Unit,  the  American  Fund  for  French  Wounded, 
the  American  Committee  for  Devastated 
France,  and  the  college  units' recruited  under 
the  Red  Cross.  The  chief  necessity  and  ad- 
vantage of  such  an  arrangement  no  longer 
existed.  With  the  signing  of  the  armistice 
transportation  had  become  unrestricted.  With 
the  practical  end  of  the  war,  the  wartime  cen- 
tralization of  American  effort  in  the  Red 
Cross  became  untenable.  The  purpose  of 
the  organization  could  no  longer  be  said  to  be 
the  winning  of  the  war.  Its  civilian  activities 
resumed  their  normal  scope,  that  of  an 
agency  of  emergent  relief.  On  February  28, 
1919,  the  War  Council  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  was  dissolved. 

It  is  too  early  to  appraise  the  effort  of  the 
American  Red  Cross  for  the  civilians  of  France. 
A  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  Lafayette, 
France  has  garnered  the  harvest  of  good- 
will, of  deep  obligation,  which  he  sowed  in 
the  heart  of  America.  In  like  manner,  in  the 
hearts  of  her  people,  and  especially  in  the  te- 


206  Helping  France 

nacious  memories  of  her  peasant  soldiers,  the 
American  Red  Cross  would  most  desire  to  be 
remembered,  not  for  its  accomplishments 
which,  on  any  computation,  are  necessarily 
inadequate,  but  for  its  ideals.  Alien  like  the 
American  army  to  the  old  civilization  of 
France,  occupying  a  position  of  peculiar 
delicacy  as  a  dispenser  of  gifts  to  a  proud  and 
war-glorified  nation,  it  has  doubtless  failed  in 
many  points  of  etiquette,  of  tact,  of  under- 
standing. But  the  purpose  of  the  American 
people  to  help,  not  as  a  charity  but  as  an  obli- 
gation,— that  at  least  has  been  evident,  and 
has  called  forth  the  generous  applause  of 
France.  We  Americans  may  be  proud  of 
this,  as  an  expression  of  the  temper  of  our 
people,  and  the  nature  of  our  government. 
It  is  not  a  new  manifestation;  this  altruistic 
r61e  of  ours  among  the  nations  has  the  sanc- 
tion of  precedents  which  prove  it  genuine. 
Our  friendship  with  Japan,  cemented  by  our 
remission  of  indemnity  for  damages  inflicted 
upon  us  on  the  opening  of  that  country,  our 


The  Flags  of  Victory         207 

disinterested  protection  of  China,  our  giving 
of  independence  to  Cuba,  our  tolerance  of 
Mexico,  our  so-called  Monroe  doctrine,  all 
attest  that  we  hold  to  our  constitution,  and 
recognize  in  nations  as  in  individuals  the 
right  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  hap- 
piness. 

Of  one  thing  we  may  be  sure,  that  no  type 
of  effort  could  have  been  more  appreciated  by 
France  than  that  carried  out  by  the  American 
Red  Cross  in  the  devastated  north.  Against 
the  material  losses  of  the  spring  of  1918,  place 
the  words  of  General  Petain:  "The  majority 
of  the  soldiers  of  France  are  farmers,  and 
nothing  could  console  them  more  than  to  see 
in  their  midst  the  soil  cultivated,  sown,  and 
maintained  in  its  fertility.  .  .  .  The  societies 
assisting  the  civilians  in  the  zone  of  the  army 
contribute  in  large  measure  to  maintain  the 
morale  of  the  troops."  Similar  testimony  is 
that  of  Paul  Bourget:*  "The  French  people 
indeed,  are  essentially,  and  above  all,  a  nation 

*  L'Aide  Immediate  aux  Agriculteurs:    For  France. 


208  Helping  France 

of  agriculturists.  The  present  army,  issued 
from  the  nation,  and  representing  it  in  its 
entirety,  is  thus  recruited  primarily  among 
the  peasants,  and  its  qualities  are  those  of 
the  French  farmer,  of  the  rough  and  patient 
farm-laborer  'attached  to  the  soil  he  has 
turned.'  Look  carefully.  This  war  bears  his 
imprint,  for  he  has  marked  it  with  some  of  his 
most  moving  particularities. 

"This  war  is  long  and  slow,  reflecting  one 
of  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  our 
country-people's  nature:  Invincible  patience, 
the  faculty  of  waiting  and  recommencing. 
They  possess  to  a  singularly  high  degree  the 
quality  of  adaptation,  and  that  quality  is 
being  applied  to-day  in  the  fighting  in  the 
trenches,  just  as  it  has  been  applied  in  the 
past,  and  as  it  will  be  again  in  the  future,  to  the 
sowing  of  the  fields  in  the  rain,  and  to  the 
plowing  of  the  soil.  But  this  quality  of  adap- 
tation must  not  be  mistaken  for  passiveness. 
The  peasant,  wearing  a  military  mantle  and 
helmet,  and  led  to  the  assault  of  the  German 


The  Flags  of  Victory         209 

lines,  does  not  follow  his  officers  in  the  same 
way  as  his  flocks  followed  him  when  he  wore 
his  shepherd's  cloak.  His  obedience  is  intel- 
ligent; this  intelligence  is  another  of  his  char- 
acteristics. He  seeks  to  understand.  He 
knows  why  he  is  fighting  and  what  he  is  de- 
fending. 

"The  clear  perception  of  the  object  for 
which  France  entered  upon  the  grim  struggle: 
to  remain  mistress  of  her  own  destinies,  has 
sustained  him  from  the  very  beginning.  He 
is  not  fighting  for  the  glory  of  one  man.  He 
is  fighting  for  himself  and  his  fellows,  fight- 
ing for  his  own  soil.  Patria — terra  patrum — 
what  meaning  there  is  in  this  etymology.  It 
holds  all  that  makes  the  substance  of  human 
life  and  its  price:  the  dead  and  their  local 
inheritance,  the  impressive  recoil  of  the  past, 
and  the  presence  of  the  little  corner  of  earth 
to  be  plowed,  fertilized  and  defended." 

"It  is  this  French  peasant,"  to  quote  this 
time  from  Rene*  Bazin,  "so  attached  to  his 
soil,  so  laborious,  in  all  battles  so  silently 


2io  Helping  France 

brave,  whom  you  have  undertaken  to 
assist."* 

Now  that  the  battle  is,  we  trust,  over,  this 
soldier,  yes,  the  soldier  of  the  devastated  area, 
returns  to  his  home.  One  hears  of  him  thus 
returning  from  the  four  years  of  war,  over- 
come and  fainting  at  the  sight  of  the  heap  of 
powdered  stone  that  was  his  ancestral  farm. 
One  hears  of  an  officer,  coming  a  prisoner  from 
Germany,  unable  to  find  any  trace  of  wife  or 
children  or  house.  One  hears  of  a  senator  of  a 
devastated  department,  homeless  in  a  terrible 
sense,  whose  daughters  had  been  carried  into 
the  most  abominable  of  slaveries  in  Germany. 
Up  to  the  measure  of  its  effectiveness,  of  its 
sympathy,  will  the  American  Red  Cross  be 
remembered  for  all  time  by  such,  both  the 
heroes  and  victims  of  war. 

The  French,  intensely  practical,  as  well  as 
generous,  have  asked  from  time  to  time  what 
monument  the  American  Red  Cross  will  leave 
in  their  midst.  In  commenting  on  this,  a 

*  L'Aide  Immediate  aux  Agriculteurs :  For  France. 


The  Flags  of  Victory         211 

director  of  Red  Cross  civilian  effort  has  said: 
"  We  have  not  a  single  enduring  piece  of  work 
in  France  to  point  to  to  call  our  own.  Our 
aim  has  been  to  help  the  French  in  their  own 
way.  Our  monument  will  be  in  their  hearts." 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

AMERICAN  RED  CROSS 

Resume  of  the  Activities  of  the  Bureau,  asked  for  by 

M.  le  President  du  Comite  du  Secours  National,  in 

his  letter  of  6  March 

Paris,  9  March,  1918. 

The  aim  of  the  Bureau  of  Reconstruction  and  Relief 
has  been  to  work  with  the  departmental  committees 
wherever  established,  to  supplement  existing  organi- 
zations, to  encourage  deserving  ones,  and  to  create 
new  ones.  The  Red  Cross  is  not  an  "oeuvre,"  but  it 
seeks  to  help  the  "oeuvres,"  and  occasionally  has  had 
to  do  the  work  of  "reuvres"  in  places  where  none 
exist. 

Beside  distributing  supplies,  the  Bureau  is  interested 
in  fostering  agriculture  and  the  manufacture,  so  far  as 
possible,  of  goods  needed  in  relief  work.  For  this 
purpose,  as  well  as  for  discovering  the  needs  of  the 
population  in  the  areas  near  the  front,  the  field  has 
been  divided  into  six  "provinces" — with  delegates 
stationed  at  Arras,  Ham,  Noyon,  Soissons,  CMlons, 
and  Nancy.  An  " ouvroir  central"  has  been  established 
at  Amiens,  whence  garments  are  distributed;  ware- 
houses at  Ham,  Nesle,  Noyon,  Soissons,  and  Nancy, 

215 


216  Appendix 

serve  to  store  supplies  imported  to  the  devastated 
areas.  The  delegates  work  in  connection  with  rep- 
resentatives of  the  Construction  Department,  and 
besides  overseeing  the  distribution  of  relief,  report  on 
new  needs,  and  cooperate  in  every  possible  way  with 
the  admirable  relief  work  carried  on  by  the  French 
Government  and  scores  of  other  devoted  French  or- 
ganizations. Not  long  since,  the  delegate  at  Nancy 
put  what  facilities  he  had  at  the  disposal  of  the  victims 
of  a  recent  air-raid;  the  same  delegate  has  been  busy 
in  helping  the  evacuated  population  reach  the  rear. 

Among  the  "oeuvres"  helped  by  the  Bureau  are 
the  following:  The  Smith  College  Relief  Unit — now 
incorporated  with  the  Red  Cross;  1'Union  des  Femmes 
de  France;  Secours  d'Urgence;  Village  Reconstitue"; 
Societe*  Franchise  des  Villages  Lib6r£s;  American 
Fund  for  French  Wounded;  Groupe  Parliamentaire 
des  Regions  Envahies;  Bureau  de  Bienfaisance  de 
la  Ville  de  Nancy;  local  committees  at  Babreuf, 
Compidgne,  Ransart;  and  various  individuals. 

It  is  a  policy  of  the  Bureau  not  to  distribute  secours 
"au  hasard,"  and  in  the  work  of  distribution  it  needs 
the  help  of  disinterested  local  organizations.  With 
the  needs  of  the  communes  stated  by  local  committees, 
the  Bureau  can  assure  a  just  division  of  supplies; 
it  will  give  to  those  who  cannot  work,  and  to  those 
who  will  work,  but  not  to  those  who  are  unwilling 
to  work. 

Among  the  things  distributed,  besides  food  and 
clothing,  may  be  mentioned  the  following:  seed,  live 


Appendix  217 

stock,  machinery  for  farmers,  fertilizers,  furnishings — 
such  as  beds,  blankets,  tables,  stoves,  kitchen  uten- 
sils, etc. 

Reconstruction  headquarters  have  been  established 
at  Croix  Moligneaux,  Matigny,  Guizancourt  and 
Quivieres,  in  the  Somme.  The  Smith  College  Relief 
Unit  is  stationed  at  Grccourt. 

According  to  the  last  Bureau  report,  over  19,300 
persons  were  reached  by  the  relief  work  in  February. 

PLANS  TO  HELP  PEOPLE  OF  DEVASTATED  REGIONS  * 

It  is  the  desire  of  the  American  Red  Cross  to  co- 
operate with  the  official  French  effort.  We  have  had 
our  relief  experts  visit  the  regions  and  have  had  a 
medical  and  public  health  survey  made  by  one  of 
the  recognized  experts  on  such  matters. 

We  understand  it  is  the  plan  of  the  French  Govern- 
ment to  cover  the  evacuated  region  with  various 
French  Government  committees.  It  has  always  been 
our  desire  to  work  conjointly  with  French  societies 
and  to  aid  them.  We  suggested  to  the  French  govern- 
ment through  M.  Tardieu  therefore  for  their  con- 
sideration, the  following  plan  for  American  Red  Cross 
effort  which  we  believe  would  make  our  aid  most 
effective: 

With  the  cessation  of  military  endeavors,  the  Ameri- 
can Red  Cross  has  a  vast  amount  of  material  and  sup- 
plies released  in  connection  with  our  military  operations, 

*  Red  Cross  Bulletin,  Paris,  Dec.  28,  1918. 


2i8  Appendix 

motor  vehicles,  hospital  supplies,  etc.,  including  a 
large  quantity  of  hospital  equipment,  beds,  bedding, 
hospital  garments.  We  have  American  Red  Cross 
committees  all  over  the  United  States  formed  and 
producing  various  kinds  of  supplies  constantly,  and 
they  will  no  doubt  continue  to  for  some  time.  Hun- 
dreds of  carloads  of  supplies  no  longer  necessary  for 
military  American  Red  Cross  Work  are  even  now 
being  received  at  our  concentration  points. 

Large  Base  Warehouses 

We  propose  to  divide  the  evacuated  area  into  a 
number  of  divisions  and  establish  a  large  base  ware- 
house in  each.  At  the  head  of  each  warehouse  we 
will  have  one  of  our  most  competent  General  Relief 
executives.  Attached  to  each  will  be  necessary  ware- 
house staff  and  a  fleet  of  camions  and  some  touring 
cars.  In  these  warehouses  we  will  concentrate  such 
available  supplies  described  above  as  we  propose  to 
assign  for  this  work,  and  such  total  supplies  will  be 
subject  to  the  requisition  of  and  delivery  by  us  to 
government  committees  working  in  the  evacuated 
areas. 

In  other  words,  instead  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
taking  any  one  section  and  confining  our  endeavors 
to  that  section,  we  will  distribute  the  total  that  we 
can  do  primarily  in  the  way  of  supplies  among  French 
Government  committees,  in  that  way  supplementing 
their  efforts  wherever  they  may  be  operating. 


Appendix  219 

Tardieu  Endorses  Plan 

M.  Tardieu,  in  accepting  the  plan,  said  in  part: 

"Permit  me  to  begin  with,  to  express  to  you  our 
gratitude  for  the  generous  assistance  that  you  propose 
to  give  to  the  people  who  have  suffered  so  much 
from  the  war.  You  will  thus  add  to  the  great  work 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  a  new  page.  No  initiative 
will  be  more  appreciated  by  our  population,  and  I 
wish  above  all  to  express  to  you  here  my  deep  gratitude. 

"The  program  you  mention  is  quite  in  accordance 
with  the  views  of  the  French  Government.  The 
Minister  of  the  Liberated  Regions  has  organized  in 
the  whole  of  the  territory  previously  invaded,  a  ser- 
vice for  the  coordination  of  relief,  and  the  help  that 
you  may  bring  to  them  in  the  form  you  contemplate 
will  be  most  precious. 

"In  order  to  insure  the  contact  between  your  dele- 
gate in  each  department  and  the  French  relief  works 
accepted  by  the  Government,  my  colleague,  Mr.  Le- 
brun,  is  quite  willing  to  create  special  committees 
where  your  delegate  would  meet  the  authorized  rep- 
resentatives of  the  administration  of  the  National 
Relief,  of  the  French  Relief  works  exercising  their  ac- 
tivities in  the  Department,  and  of  the  groups  of  those 
requiring  assistance.  If  the  general  lines  of  this  pro- 
gram are  acceptable  to  you,  its  performance  will  be 
placed  under  the  control  of  the  Ministry  of  the  Liber- 
ated Regions,  to  which  is  attached  the  National  Office 
for  the  coordination  of  relief  in  the  liberated  regions." 


220  Appendix 

MINISTRY  OF  BLOCUS  AND  OP  THE  LIBERATED 
REGIONS 

March  7,  1919. 

Note  in  Regard  to  the  Organization  of  the  Coordination 

of  Relief  in  the  Liberated  Regions  and  in  Regard  to 

the  Operation  of  Relief  Societies 

The  High  Committee  of  Coordination  of  Relief 
in  the  liberated  regions,  which  is,  in  a  sense,  the  ad- 
ministrative council  of  the  national  office  of  coordination 
in  the  Ministry  of  the  Liberated  Regions,  has  put  in 
the  form  of  a  Recommendation  approved  by  the 
minister,  the  general  principle  of  the  organization  of 
relief  in  the  departments  injured  by  acts  of  war. 

This  organization,  inspired  by  the  experience  gained 
in  certain  sectors,  notably  in  the  department  of  the 
Somme  and  that  of  the  Oise  at  the  time  of  the  first 
period  of  the  liberation  of  these  departments  in  1917, 
has  as  a  working  basis  the  creation  of  local  relief 
stations  serving  geographic  sectors  in  such  a  way  as 
to  place  the  agencies  of  relief  in  direct  contact  with 
the  population. 

The  conduct  of  these  stations  of  relief  is,  as  a  rule, 
entrusted  to  private  societies  who  appoint  for  the 
purpose  one  or  several  Delegates  confirmed  by  the 
Administration.  In  default  of  this,  the  conduct  could 
be  assumed  by  some  person  designated  by  the  Ad- 
ministration. 

In  a  sector  of  relief  so  assigned,  the  distribution  of 
gifts  of  whatever  description  should  whenever  possible 


Appendix  221 

be  effected  by  the  delegates  of  the  society  to  whom 
the  local  station  belongs.  Committees  and  charitable 
persons  desirous  of  performing  a  particular  action  or  of 
making  a  special  gift  in  these  sectors  are  always  re- 
quested not  to  do  so  except  through  the  intermediary 
of  the  local  relief  station,  or  in  accord  with  it. 

The  local  bureaus  of  coordination  of  relief  are  so 
constituted  as  to  be  able  to  serve  as  intermediaries 
between  the  Administration,  the  local  stations,  and 
the  relief  societies.  They  pool  information,  offers  and 
demands,  and  are  the  agents,  through  the  intermediary 
of  the  Prefects,  of  the  National  Office  of  Coordination 
of  Relief,  for  the  purpose  of  avoiding,  so  far  as  pos- 
sible, omissions  and  duplications,  and  of  taking  charge 
so  far  as  they  can  provide  them,  of  needs  which  the 
local  stations  cannot  satisfy,  with  the  least  possible 
delay.  The  local  bureaus  of  coordination  of  relief 
are  composed  essentially  of  a  Committee  comprising 
representatives  of  the  relief  societies,  of  the  populace, 
and  of  the  Administration,  and  act,  with  their  necessary 
personnel,  under  the  direction  of  a  representative  of 
the  Prefecture. 

In  general,  the  limits  of  a  relief  station  correspond 
somewhat  to  a  canton,  and  the  local  bureau  of  coor- 
dination extends  its  sphere  to  the  territorial  equivalence 
of  an  arrondissement. 

Actually,  the  outlines  of  this  organization  having 
been  so  determined,  the  Administration  endeavors  to 
fill  them  out,  and  to  see  to  it  that  there  remains  no 
blank  on  the  map  of  the  sectors  of  relief. 


222  Appendix 

For  this  purpose,  the  delegates  of  different  recog- 
nized Committees,  and  the  principle  charitable  indi- 
viduals were  invited,  in  the  course  of  working  confer- 
ences held  at  the  Ministry,  to  make  known  their 
intentions  and  their  preferences.  In  this  way,  a 
general  programme  was  established  upon  the  agree- 
ments reached  between  the  Administration  and  the 
different  Committees  and  between  the  Societies  among 
themselves,  at  these  working  conferences. 

Meetings  have  been  held  since  at  the  Prefectures, 
in  order  to  reach  a  definite  agreement  on  these  points 
in  each  department. 

The  relief  societies,  after  these  conferences,  have 
now  been  asked  to  make  known  their  final  decisions 
and  then*  actual  possibilities.  In  spite  of  the  material 
difficulties  of  the  hour,  of  which  the  gravest  is  the 
lack  of  transports,  many  have  already  responded  and 
have  even  commenced  to  realize  their  beneficent 
campaign.  Everywhere,  meantime,  Prefectures,  Com- 
mittees, and  individuals  fully  organized  to  assure  the 
coordination  of  relief,  are  proceeding  to  the  distribution 
of  the  gifts  provided  either  by  the  Administration  or 
by  private  sources. 

The  charitable  groups  which  propose  to  intervene 
in  the  devastated  regions  to  care  for  the  innumerable 
unfortunates  of  these  unhappy  localities,  and  to  aid 
in  rebuilding  the  ruins,  become  more  and  more  nu- 
merous. No  mention  will  be  made  in  this  note  of 
proposals  of  adoption  or  of  god-mothering  which 


Appendix  223 

spring  up  on  every  hand,  and  which  have  for  their 
object  the  helping  of  particular  localities. 

The  proper  steps  in  order  to  effect  these  adoptions 
and  god-motherings  have  been  drawn  up  in  an  accom- 
panying recommendation  of  the  High  Committee  of 
the  Coordination  of  Relief. 

In  order  to  make  a  list  of  the  relief  societies,  French 
or  foreign,  which  propose  to  assist  the  liberated  regions, 
these  societies  can  be  divided  into  two  categories: 
the  societies  of  general  scope  which  assist  impartially 
all  the  devastated  country  and  the  societies  of  local 
scope  which  limit  their  intervention  to  a  fixed  area. 

These  general  and  these  local  societies  divide  in 
turn  into  two  sorts  of  intervention  according  as  they 
furnish  all  kinds  of  assistance  (distribution  of  linen, 
of  clothing,  of  furniture,  care  of  the  populace,  etc.), 
or  confine  themselves  to  a  particular  form  of  assist- 
ance (gifts  of  agricultural  implements,  of  furniture, 
etc.). 

One  must  set  apart  the  two  great  relief  organizations 
which  work  in  collaboration  with  the  coordination  of 
relief,  but  by  special  and  direct  means:  The  American 
Red  Cross,  and  Le  Secours  National  (National  Relief). 

The  American  Red  Cross  which  accomplished  a 
considerable  work  during  the  period  of  liberation  in 
1917-1918,  is  about  to  set  up  a  new  organization  by 
creating  great  relief  warehouses  in  the  principal  centres 
of  the  devastated  regions  (Lille,  Amiens,  Laon,  Ch&lons- 
sur-Marne,  Verdun,  etc.).  Its  representatives  will 
be  in  touch  with  a  special  Committee  in  each  depart- 


224  Appendix 

ment,  where  they  will  be  able  to  find  all  the  information 
and  all  the  collaboration  suitable  for  seconding  their 
efforts.  The  American  Red  Cross  will  make  its 
distributions  through  the  local  relief  stations. 

Le  Secours  National,  presided  over  by  M.  Appel, 
and  of  which  the  Secretary-General  is  M.  Guillet, 
has  its  agents  in  its  departmental  Committees  in  the 
liberated  regions.  It  affects  its  distribution  directly 
or  with  the  cooperation  of  the  prefectures  in  agree- 
ment with  the  National  Office  of  Coordination  of 
Relief. 

Le  Secours  National  has  appropriated  important 
sums  from  its  budget  for  contributions  in  kind  and 
for  various  subventions  since  the  liberation  of  1917 
up  to  the  time  of  the  hostile  advance  of  1918,  and 
it  has  resumed  its  subventions  with  a  truly  vast 
programme,  and  means  of  action  which  should  be 
especially  appreciated. 

Le  Groupe  Parliamentaire  of  the  invaded  depart- 
ments presided  over  by  M.  le  Senateur  Cuvinot  sends 
regular  subventions  to  the  unfortunate  departments. 
These  sums  are  redivided  or  utilized  through  the 
care  of  a  Committee  which  functions  closely  with  the 
Prefect  of  each  department.  A  certain  number  of 
relief  societies,  French  and  foreign,  have  grouped 
themselves  in  general  associations  under  the  name 
of  Union  des  QEuvres  de  Secours  aux  Foyers  Devaste"s 
par  la  Guerre  (Union  of  Relief  Societies  for  Homes 
Devastated  by  the  War)  of  which  the  Secretary  General 
is  M.  Silhol. 


Appendix 

Recommendations  Issued  by  the  High  Committee  of  Coor- 
dination of  Relief,  in  its  Sitting  of  February  18, 1919, 
Concerning  the  Various  Kinds  of  Relief  Sus- 
ceptible of  being  Classified  under  the  Head 

of  Adoption  or  God-Mothering 

The   High   Committee   of   Coordination    of    Relief 
anticipating  the  organization  of  concerted  offers  for 
the    reconstruction    of   the    devastated    regions,    and 
especially  of  such  as  present  themselves  in  the  form 
of  propositions  of  adoption  or  of  god-mothering. 
In  regard  to  the  question  itself: 
Issues  the  recommendation  that  the  resources  pro- 
ceeding from  these  forms  of  assistance  must  be  applied 
to  special  and  designated  objects  and  not  to  recon- 
struction in  general. 

In  regard  to  the  methods  of  applying  these  resources: 

Considering   that   the   responsibility   of   the   State 

of  France  such  as  she  shall  establish  by  the  law  actually 

under  discussion  before  Parliament  applies  to  all  the 

damages  suffered  by  individuals; 

Considering  on  the  one  hand  the  difficulty  of  di- 
viding among  individuals  the  resources  necessarily 
insufficient  for  the  restoration  of  entire  towns,  and 
on  the  other  the  necessity  of  offering  to  donors,  indi- 
vidual or  collective,  definite  and  limited  objects  cor- 
responding to  their  expressed  wish  _  to  adopt  such 
town  or  region; 

Issues  the  recommendation  that  the  charitable 
groups  or  persons  who  intend  to  intervene  in  the 
form  aforesaid  could  fix  their  choice  for  the  realiza- 


226  Appendix 

tion  of  the  action  which  they  propose  to  take  upon 
one  of  the  methods  indicated  hereafter: 

First. — Distribution  of  assistance  to  the  inhabitants 
(beds,  bedding,  clothing,  household  articles,  small 
tools  for  the  house,  for  flower-culture,  for  gardening, 
small  animals,  etc.). 

Second. — Intervention  for  the  purpose  of  bringing 
an  improvement  or  an  addition  (as  concerns  what  has 
been  restored  under  the  title  of  damages  of  war)  in  the 
establishment,  real  or  personal,  of  reconstructed  dwell- 
ings, notably  taking  charge  of  dispensing  improvements 
affecting  hygiene,  and  domestic  or  rural  economy,  etc. 

Third. — Taking  charge  of  sums  advanced  under  the 
term  of  loans  to  losers,  to  keep  track  of  the  difference 
between  old  and  new  (deterioration)  in  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  dwellings  destroyed,  sums  previously  consti- 
tuting by  the  terms  of  the  law  a  debt  of  the  war-loser 
reimbursable  after  a  lapse  of  twenty-five  years. 

Fourth. — Advancing  costs  of  reconstruction  against 
reimbursement  of  one  part  only  of  these  costs  by 
the  loser  from  his  indemnity  for  damages  of  war. 

Fifth. — Participation  in  the  reconstruction  of  public 
monuments,  civic  or  religious  (town  halls,  churches, 
schools,  hospitals)  with  a  view  of  allowing  to  be 
brought  to  them  desirable  improvements,  embellish- 
ments or  enlargements. 

Sixth. — The  effecting  of  any  entirely  new  work  in  the 
common  interest,  water-supply,  lighting,  sanitation, 
cheap  housing,  erection  of  buildings  of  public  interest. 

Seventh. — The  creation  of  philanthropic  works  or 


Appendix 


227 


charitable  foundations  (hospitals,  creches,  dispensaries, 
sanitoria,  children's  colonies,  etc.). 
r  Eighth. — The  creation  of  centres  of  communal  We 
(Maisons  des  tous,  Foyers  des  campagnes)  comprising 
hall  of  recreation  and  of  fetes,  educational  library, 
post-graduate  and  professional,  installation  of  games 
and  sports  for  the  young,  shower-baths,  consultations 
for  nurslings,  milk  stations,  etc.,  etc.,  and  dedicated 
to  the  memory  of  the  victims  of  the  war. 

REPORT  ON  THE  AGRICULTURAL  CONDITION  OF  ONE 

COMMUNE  IN  1914  AND  IN  1919 

COMMUNE  OF  BABCETJF 

(Survey  made  by  the  Comit£  de  Babceuf  of  the  S.  B.  M.) 

Hectares. 

Roads 5 

Waterways 10 

Canal 15 

Wood  and  fallow  land 60 

Railroad 5 

Meadows 95 

Cultivated  land 500 

Wheat 160 

Oats 90 

Rye 20 

Barley 20 

Potatoes 15 

String  beans 40 

Sugar  beets 90 

Fodder  beets 15 

Alfalfa  and  clover 35 

Gooseberries 3 

Orchards 6 

Gardens • 

*  A  hectare  is  about  two  and  one-half  acres. 


690  hectares 


500  hectares  of  cultivated  ground . 


Grains 


£28 


Appendix 


LIVE 


Horses. 

Cows. 

Oxen. 

Quantity. 

1 

Quantity. 

•i 

Quantity. 

«5 

•3 

Before  the  war  

95 
90 

1300 
700 

150 
150 

500 

40 
40 

300  to 
700 

Taken  by  the  Germans 

March,    1918,    stock 
replaced  

22 
17 

2000 
3000 

35 
10 

1000 
2000 

January  15,  1919  

2000 

Appendix 


229 


STOCK 


Bulls. 

Sheep.Goats. 

Fowls. 

Rabbits. 

Piga. 

i 

1 

Quantity. 

'i 

Quantity. 

0 

1 

Quantity. 

1 

Quantity. 

| 

Turkeys 

8 

500 

0 

1800 

12f 

1000 

2.50f 

50 

30f 

Hens 

8 
1 

1000 

0 
0 

1800 
400 

3f 

1000 
500 

8f 

50 
10 

... 

8f 

Turkeys 

2000 

0 

25 

60f 

35 

12f 

1 

120f 

Hens 

15f 

230 


Appendix 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  AGRICULTURAL  MACHINERY,  WAGONS,  FARM 
IMPLEMENTS 


1914 


1919 


Two-wheeled  carts 100 

Light  spring  wagons 40 

Heavy  draft  harnesses 85 

Light  draft  harnesses 60 

Harnesses  for  shaft  vehicles 40 

Carriage  chains  of  5  metres  in  length 300 

Rotary  plows 50 

Disc  harrows 150 

Rollers 50 

Seeders 15 

Double-shovel  plows 20 

Cultivators 35 

Dividers 15 

Harvesters 2 

Mowers 20 

Reapers  and  binders 8 

Grind  stones 50 

Horse  hay  rakes 20 

Fanning  mills 8 

Motor  threshers 4 

Horse  threshers 3 

Balers 4 

Bean  planters 10 

Bean  thrashers 8 

Root  cutters 40 

Beet  washers. . .  5 


12 
3 

16 
8 
3 

50 
6 

30 
3 
5 
5 
5 
4 
1 
3 
2 

3 
3 


3 

1 

10 
2 


NOTE. — A  part  of  the  actual  implements  were  rebought  in  1917, 
but  most  of  them  have  deteriorated. 


Appendix 


231 


1914  1919 

Cider  mills 80                  5 

Cider  pressers 80                  5 

Crushers,  compressors,  oil  cake  breakers. .  28 

Cider  casks 2000                50 

Cider  vats 300                  2 

Scales 50                  5 

Cesspools  and  pumps 12                  1 

Miscellaneous 

.Wheel  barrows 

Ladders 

Scythes 

Pitchforks 2000                 50 

Dairy  Equipments 

Cream-separators 10 

Butter  workers 1 

Churns 130 

Accessories 30 

Cheese-making  implements  on  two  farms . 
Forges — 3  stationary 

4  portable 7 

Carpenter  shops 2 

Wheel-wright  shop  with  motor  saw 1 

Motors,  2  to  10  H.P.,  electric  motor  force  .  4 

Gasolene  motors,  2  to  7  H.  P 4 


232 


Appendix 


TWENTY-EIGHT  FARMS  IN  THE  COMMUNE  IN  1914. 


Hectares. 


Mr  

1  of 

80 

Mr  

lof 

50 

Mr  

1  of 

40 

Mr                

1  of 

W 

Mr                   

1  of 

<H) 

Mr       

1  of 

25 

Mr  

lof 

15 

Mr                               1 

f  10 

Mr...             

10 

Mr  

10 

Mr  

6  of 

10 

Mr  

10 

Mr  

10 

Mr  1 

r    7 

Mr  

7 

Mr  

7 

Mr  ] 

X 

Mr  

5 

Mr  

>  5  of 

H 

Mr  

5 

Mr  

ft 

Mr  •) 

f    * 

Mr  

?, 

Mr  

2 

Mr   

7  of  < 

Mr  

91 

Mr              

2 

Mr.. 

.    2 

Appendix 


233 


YIELDS 
Grains: 

Barley 25  quintaux  *  par  hectare 

Oats 80 

Wheat 25         "           " 

Rye 25 

Potatoes 300 

String  beans 20         "           " 

Sugar  beets 400         "           " 

Fodder  beets 600         "           " 

Hay 900         "           " 

Alfalfa  and  clover 1,000         "           " 

Cherries,  entire  crop —  8,000  kilos  f 

Gooseberries 8,000      " 

Apples  (average) 30,000      " 

*  A  quintal  is  100  pounds, 
f  A  kilogramme  is  2.2  pounds. 


234 


Appendix 


Price  Before  the 
War. 

Present  Price. 

Milk: 
Production  10  litres  per  day 
and  per  cow  during  7  mos. 
Total  production:  800  litres 
per  day  for  the  commune 
before  the  war  

le  litre        20f 

le  litre        60f 

Grains: 
Wheat  

le  quintal    25f 

le  quintal    75f 

Oats  

"           20f 

"           65f 

Rye.  . 

20f 

"           65f 

Barley  

20f 

65f 

Potatoes  

"       6-10f 

"           43f 

Sugar  beets     .       

la  tonne      30f 

la  tonne 

Fodder  beets      

20f 

"           80f 

Cider  apples  

80f 

Cherries  

le  quintal    50f 

Gooseberries   

50f 

String  beans  

"           50f 

Hay.  . 

la  tonne      80f 

la  tonne    332f 

Renting. 

Selling. 

Price  of  hectare  ....         .    . 

120f 

3000  to 

Net  gains  before  the  war,  the 
family  living  on  the  farm,  ap- 
proximately by  the  hectare  . 

50  to 
80f 

50001 
200f 

Appendix  235 

DAMAGES  AXD  LOSSES 

Two  thousand  francs  per  year,  per  hectare,  for  the  whole  of  the 
exploitation. — Estimate  of  Lt.  Fort,  service  agricole,  1917. 

1914  \ 

1915  I  Harvest  seized  by  the  Germans. ; 

1916  J 

1917  No  cultivation. 

1918  Work  of  80  hectares  approximately,  harvest  lost  in  seed: 

hay,  alfalfa,  clover,  lost. 

1919  January  15,  4  hectares  sown;  496  fallow. 

It  must  take  five  years  to  put  the  land  back  into  the  condition 
of  the  report  before  the  war. 

One  must  reckon  100  frs.  per  hectare  for  labor  to  put  the  land 
into  cultivation  because  of  trenches,  fragments  of  shells  or  unex- 
ploded  projectiles. 

In  the  commune,  200  hectares  in  this  condition. 

All  the  farm  equipment  was  destroyed  or  carried  off  by  the  Ger- 
mans. 5000  frs.  worth  of  implements  of  husbandry  lost. 

All  the  live  stock  existing  in  1914  and  that  produced  during 
1915-1916,  up  to  March  15,  1917,  was  taken  by  the  Germans. 


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